


Opening The Way

by incandescens



Category: GetBackers
Genre: Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-16 05:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 44,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incandescens/pseuds/incandescens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story set in manga continuity, but differing in the explanation of Babylon City, the Voodoo Child, and other background details. Set after the Eternal Bond arc. The drums are sounding: the sacrifices are being gathered: the way is open. And nobody can be trusted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

** Chapter One **

 

Blood stained the maps which hung across the room in long lines, splattered across them like filth on clean washing. It soaked into the paper as it slowly trickled down, leaving patterns on the carefully cartographed pages as though to mark a new set of mountains across them.

The man in the long white cape might have quoted Macbeth, but he saw little point in that sort of amusement -- and, besides, there was nobody in the room capable of hearing him.

The male target lay on the floor with one hand still reaching towards his computer; he had been taken by surprise, but even so, there had been enough life left in him even as the blade carved across his body that he had managed to stretch one desperate hand towards the meticulously clean keyboard. SETI danced across the monitor, unseeing, unhearing, uncaring, in a smooth pattern of coloured lines.

The female target was caught out of time, paused with her mouth open to scream. He had turned away when he swept his blade through the air to shake off the blood, so that it wouldn't spatter her. It was a small enough piece of courtesy, but it pleased him. A matter of style.

Well. Nearly done. The cameras in the area would be dead for another three minutes, even if Makubex should notice the interference and attempt to correct it. Time to remove her and leave, before Makubex or his group should investigate.

And then -- well. That was when the rites and ceremonies would truly begin.

* * *

There was a knocking at the door. It shook the car and jarred Ban out of sleep, echoing through the metal of the vehicle's structure and reverberating in his bones. He jerked upright with catlike speed, heels crashing to the floor from where they'd been propped on the dashboard, and stared at his reflection in the mirror blankly, trying to remember who he was, where he was, what time of year it was, and whether they'd managed to find a parking space.

"Ban-chan!" It was Ginji. He'd sent Ginji to get food. Yes. That was important. Ginji's face hovered outside the window, blond hair ruffled like the sun's rays, cheerful wakefulness just as much appreciated as the sun's light on a morning when he wanted to sleep in. "Ban-chan! They've got anchovies! Do you want anchovies?"

Anchovies. Little anchovies swam through Ban's sleep-clouded mind, flicking their fins and somehow mingling with images of Hevn's breasts. "Tasty," he muttered.

"I'll get them!" Ginji cheered, trotting back to the pizza shop.

The morning sun shone on the parking ticket which had been tucked behind one of the car's windscreen wipers, but Ban wasn't going to let that bother him for the moment. Certainly not while they were -- well, broke was such an unkind word. Financially inconvenienced was a more convenient way of putting it, and besides, as long as there was a scattering of change in their pockets, they weren't _broke_ per se.

He could smell approaching anchovies and mozzarella and tomato and pepperoni and other good things. He quickly scrambled out of the car and moved to intercept Ginji before half the pizzas could vanish between shop and vehicle. "Oi! Did you think you were going to get to gobble it all?"

"Ban-chan!" Ginji retorted through a mouthful of cheese, eyes wide with shock and distress. "Of course I'd leave some for you . . ."

"Key word in that being leave," Ban muttered through a satisfactory bite of pizza. All right, so this pizza represented the last of their funds -- but how on earth could they be expected to do their usual brilliant job while fading away of starvation?

The two of them leant against the car, wolfing the food down, the empty pizza box propped behind them. "So," Ginji started, "we could go to the Honky-Tonk . . ."

"Where Paul said he'd kick us out if we tried hanging around without buying anything and he'd do it twice over if Natsumi felt sorry and started giving us coffee on the house," Ban pointed out.

"Um!" Ginji swallowed the last bite of his pizza. "Well, but where will people know to look for us if we aren't there? What if a really important case comes in and they can't find us?"

"Then we're out of luck," Ban said gloomily. "Though if it's Hevn . . ."

Ginji perked up. "Oh yes. Hevn-san can always find us!"

"Especially when it's a case so dangerous that you need a maniac to take it," Ban muttered. "That woman loves her commission."

"She's just being professional." Ginji licked his fingers, chasing the last echoes of mozzarella. "We could drop by to see Shido and Madoka . . ."

Ban perked up slightly. "I suppose we could see if she's got the monkey-trainer totally whipped yet. Maybe she's got him clearing out the gutters."

Ginji nodded enthusiastically. "And we could help!"

Ban hastily reviewed other options. Parading around the streets with signs wasn't yet a necessity. Himiko had relocated from the address he'd managed to discover, and he wasn't sure where she was living, even if she had expressed any wish to have them drop round -- though really, letting them use her shower and kitchen was the _least_ that she could have done for them -- so that wasn't an option. Visiting Mugenjou wasn't even in the playing field. As for Maria -- well, that had been necessary during the affair with the playing cards and the children and Lucifer, but now the further he could stay from that side of things, the happier he'd be. "Well, we could always _try_ the Honky-Tonk," he temporised. "We've got enough for one coffee each. Something might turn up."

* * *

The Honky-Tonk hadn't been open for long by the time that they got there. The smell of fresh coffee hung richly in the air, darkly glorious and magnificent, drawing Ban and Ginji to the counter like moths to a candle. Without having to be asked, Natsumi poured off two mugs for them. Paul tilted his newspaper to eye them both, sighed, and let the paper droop back again. From the kitchen came the sound of pans being scrubbed.

"You ought to get that poor girl a dishwasher," Ban commented, cradling his hands round his mug.

"No, it's fine, really!" Rena's voice came over the noise of running taps. "There really isn't that much to do!"

"Besides," Paul stared over his newspaper again, "I keep on getting stiffed on the bills. By certain people. Who are not far from here, and who, in fact, have a significant running bill, and have yet to pay for this morning's coffee."

With a haughty air, Ban slid the last few yen from his pocket and tossed them onto the counter. "There. As always, the GetBackers come through."

The door opened, and tiny bells whispered in the morning air that came in. Ban turned, but he knew who would be standing there -- Fuchoin Kazuki, pale blouse hanging loosely and baring his shoulders, hair dark and long as a woman's. Behind him, one careful poised step, was Kakei Sakura, her pink shawl gathered tightly around her hair and against her torso, and that _was_ surprising -- both that the thread spool should be out and about without his usual samurai bodyguard, and that the woman should leave Mugenjou. Something was up. "Yo," he said cheerfully, hoping that this wouldn't be something that needed to involve Ginji.

"Kazuki-chan!" Ginji launched himself from the stool and caught Kazuki in a firm hug in a single rocketing movement, his coffee mug going spinning off the edge. Ban caught it and watched in resignation. "How are you! What's going on?"

"Ginji-san." Kazuki carefully pried Ginji's arms away, and took a step back. Sakura moved quietly to match him, keeping the same polite distance. "I'm very sorry. We've just had some bad news, and I wanted to speak to you about it -- both as a friend, and in the hopes that you'll investigate it for Makubex."

"Oi." Ban put Ginji's cup back on the counter. "If this involves Mugenjou --"

"I'm afraid it does," Kazuki broke in. "Ginji-san, Gen the pharmacist has been murdered, and his granddaughter Ren has been kidnapped." Now Ban could see the anger behind the other man's eyes, the tense fury which made those golden bells shiver. "We need to get her back. And we need to find out what's going on. Ginji-san, we need you."


	2. Chapter Two

"Details," Ban said briskly, breaking the silence which had fallen. He signalled to Natsumi for fresh coffee. "Have a seat. Of course we'll have to discu --"

"Of course we'll do it," Ginji broke in. "Tell us what happened." He grabbed Kazuki's arm in one hand and Sakura's in another, towing the two of them over to one of the booths.

Ban took advantage of the moment -- not annoyed at the interruption, of course not, and certainly he wouldn't have charged _that_ high a fee, or even gone that far in negotiations -- to gauge Ginji's mood. The other GetBacker was furious, but still in shock. There wasn't any danger of . . . other things. Good. He could still discuss things rationally and wouldn't be running off to Mugenjou solo to blow the place apart. Yet. "Okay," he said, slipping in next to Ginji. "What happened, and how?"

Kazuki inclined a long-fingered hand towards Sakura, who looked up from pleating the folds of her dress to answer. "Sakura knows more about it than I do. Makubex asked her to come along in order to give a full briefing on the situation."

Sakura nodded, a grave inclination of her head that reminded Ban of her brother. "Yes, I was the first person to go and investigate, when we noticed there was a problem with the cameras -- but perhaps I should begin from the first time that we noticed something was wrong, Ginji-san?"

Ban suppressed a twitch of annoyance at the girl's automatic subservience to her Thunder Emperor, and kept his mouth shut. She'd probably talk more readily to Ginji than to him, in any case.

Ginji nodded. "Please tell us from the first thing you noticed, yes." He gave her a reassuring smile.

"It was yesterday evening, quite early," Sakura began. "We had been having minor technical difficulties with parts of the surveillance network. Makubex said that it was not overly improbable that we should have so many difficulties at once, just -- well, general bad timing. There was also a disturbance on the edge of what used to be Fuuga territory, and Kazuki-sama went with my brother and Toshiki to see to it personally."

Kazuki nodded. The bells in his hair shifted with the movement. "It was an annoyingly slow operation," he murmured. "Vexatious. The group split up, and we spent most of the night gathering them together in order to deliver a thorough reprimand."

"Sounds deliberate," Ban broke in, before Kazuki could get into the self-reproach which was doubtless next on the agenda. "But -- not just you and samurai boy, but Toshiki too? Wasn't that a bit overkill?"

Kazuki shrugged smoothly. "Uryuu has been working quite closely with us lately. Besides, with some of the cameras in that area down, it was better to take a larger team. And people remember him."

Sakura took up the narrative again. "With everything that was going on, we didn't notice part of the network going down near Gen's apartment as anything particularly unusual. When it came back up again -- well, Makubex has never monitored _inside_ those rooms, and the corridors were quiet. It was only when he checked this morning and Gen was not answering his email that Makubex became disturbed. He sent me round to check on the matter, and . . ."

Kazuki put one hand over hers. "I can understand that it was a shock to you, Sakura-san."

Ban's eyes narrowed. Something was fishy here. Sakura had been a perfectly efficient part of Fuuga, and had been right beside Makubex in the whole IL affair. She wasn't the sort to be throwing a nervous fit over one man's death, however respected he'd been. But Kazuki wasn't the sort to misjudge her reactions, and he'd known her longer than anyone else here. So if she was nervous, why?

Sakura cast her eyes down. "Naturally, I secured the area and raised the alarm. Makubex forced an immediate lockdown on all the entrances which could feasibly have been reached between the estimated time of death and the point at which I arrived, and asked Kazuki-sama to lead the investigation while he analysed the camera records which were available. We were able to track the murderer's passage, by piecing together camera downtimes and the occasional witness, to the point where he left Mugenjou."

"Witnesses?" Ginji leaned forward. "Did anyone see him? Who was it?"

"We cannot be sure." Sakura spread her hands. "I am sorry, Ginji-san. All that we know for certain is that he was tall, wore a white cape or cloak of some sort, had dark hair, and wore a long blade or weapon of some sort across his back. He was carrying Ren over one shoulder."

Ban blinked thoughtfully, while beside him Ginji twitched like a gaffed fish and began to babble, "But -- no, it couldn't be him -- surely it wouldn't --"

"Couldn't be," Ban cut in. He turned to explain to the two from Mugenjou. "There's this -- person -- called Miroku Natsuhiko. He has six, um," he decided to err on the side of simplicity, "siblings. They usually show up together but one at a time. He takes jobs as a protector and bodyguard, and that does _sound_ like a rough description of him, but I can't see him doing that. Quite."

"And Yukihiko certainly wouldn't," Ginji chimed in indignantly.

Ban shrugged. "Yukihiko would do whatever his older brother told him. He always has. They all do. But -- no, I don't think it's him. You don't have a photo, do you?"

Sakura shook her head. "We have absolutely no recorded pictures of him. Unfortunately."

"So when did they leave Mugenjou?" Ban asked, getting back to the narrative.

"Approximately half past five this morning," Sakura replied. "We lost track of them after that, and while Makubex is attempting to activate some of his connections outside Mugenjou, he thought of the two of you first."

Ban had to appreciate the graceful phrasing of that sentence. Why, she hadn't even mentioned the word Raitei yet today. If he'd had a plate of cookies, he'd have offered her one.

Ginji nodded eagerly. "Right. We can see if we can find any trace of him here. If he kidnapped Ren, then he has to be keeping her somewhere. Right, Ban? And if this is a big conspiracy of some sort, Hevn might have heard something -- she couldn't tell us anything confidential, of course, but she might have just heard something around the edges, even if she wouldn't hire us for it. And . . ."

Ban tuned him out for a moment, as another thought came to mind. _And if they, whoever they were, needed to move Ren out of Tokyo fast, then there were certain people who might be called on, and Hevn knew where to find them too. But better not bring up Doctor Jackal for the moment._

". . . and Ban knows all the seedy bars round here!" Ginji was finishing.

Ban smacked him round the head on principle.

"There is one other thing," Sakura said, cutting through Ginji's whimpering. Kazuki turned to look at her with an air of faint surprise. "Ginji-san, Midou-san, this is something which has not been brought up before, which puts the entire situation on a different level." She hesitated, clearly looking for words. "You are aware of Makubex's nature? Ren is the same."

Ban choked on the coffee which he had been about to swallow. He was conscious of Ginji going rigid, and -- far more interesting, in some ways -- the narrowing of Kazuki's eyes, the sudden shivering of the bells in his hair. "W-what -- virtual?" he burst out.

"Yes," Sakura said hastily, before Kazuki or Ginji could formulate their own questions. "Yes, like that. Yes, Kazuki-sama. Makubex and I have known ever since the lens affair. She knew as well. It was her own business. If she had wanted anyone else to know . . ."

"But she's . . ." Ginji began, then trailed off. "Oh. Wait. The timing and everything. And her being his granddaughter. Or saying she was. She really thought she was, didn't she -- that is, she must have, but -- when did she find out?"

"She didn't know." Kazuki's voice was surprisingly cold, surprisingly angry. "When _did_ she find out, Sakura?"

Sakura turned to face Kazuki. "It was when she tried to leave Mugenjou, Kazuki-sama. She -- well, you could see that she realised then."

"And you did not tell me," he said precisely.

Sakura spread her hands. "You have been in Mugenjou more than once since then, and if she had wanted you to know --"

"Of _course_ she wouldn't want me to know." He flattened one hand against the table. "Yet I had a responsibility towards her. If there was something which I could have done --"

"Kazuki." Ginji's voice cut across the other's rising tones, and Ban felt the hair on the back of his arms prickle as static plucked at the air around the four of them. "At present Ren's safety is our concern."

Kazuki took a long breath, then shifted position, letting his long tails of hair sift across his back. "You are correct. I apologise, Ginji-san."

"She knew that we knew," Sakura said softly. "She saw our eyes -- she knew that Makubex and I understood her condition, Kazuki-sama. That Makubex understood it too well."

"But this is fucking impossible," Ban broke in before everyone could start blaming themselves. "If she was -- like that -- then she couldn't have left Mugenjou!"

Ginji opened his mouth, then shut it again. Kazuki looked gracefully thoughtful, in the way that Ban suspected meant he hadn't a clue but was damned if he'd admit it.

Sakura looked grateful for the interruption. "One of the witnesses says that she was wearing heavy jewellery. Makubex suspects that this was actually some sort of technology which allowed her to be removed from Mugenjou. Of course, this casts matters in a rather different light."

"Um. I didn't think you could _do_ that," Ginji commented.

"Nobody really knows what is possible in these matters, Ginji-san," Sakura agreed. "Of course, this suggests that whoever behind this has high connections in the technological world."

Kazuki tilted his head thoughtfully. Some of the danger had ebbed from his eyes and voice. "Perhaps a faction working against Babylon City? They are taking pains to remove her from the area, it seems; and Gen was . . ."

There was a silence in the booth. None of them had really known anything about the old man's motivations, Ban reflected, and it was too late to ask now. He'd been involved with Babylon City -- that much was certain -- but had apparently broken with them to some degree. What could the designer of Mugenjou have said, had he chosen to speak? And how much had that knowledge been a threat to his former colleagues?

"I think we can divide the work up for the moment," Ban said briskly. "Thread spool here --" Ginji kicked him under the table. "What I mean is, there's no point us going over the same ground twice. You lot inside Mugenjou know far more about what Medicine Man Gen's quarters should have looked like -- especially if Sakura here was visiting him all the time. You can search them and tell us if you find anything. Move in the computer boy's cameras and have him microscope the floor or something. Put the eye-witness accounts together and do a photofit thingy. Hit the Interpol servers -- I bet computer boy can hack into them. See if you can check up on the Miroku while you're at it, just in case."

Sakura nodded. "This can be done, Midou-san."

Kazuki gave him a heavy-lidded, ironic stare. "Yes. I will be happy to supervise the investigation inside Mugenjou. I take it the two of you will be using your own connections out here?"

"Of course," Ban said expansively, stretching out his arms to either side. He squeezed Ginji's shoulders. "The GetBackers are on the case! We'll check the usual illegal transportation channels, look into who might be handling that sort of technology, get round to all our usual contacts and see if anyone saw anything then -- don't worry, we'll probably be bringing her back by this time tomorrow."

Ginji nodded, restored to his usual perkiness. "Don't worry, Kazuki-chan, Sakura-chan! We'll find her and bring her right back -- and then we'll find out who did this!"

* * *

Kudou Himiko waited till she'd added the final three drops to the distillation, then picked up her phone to stop its pestilential ringing. If she'd been earlier on in the process, then it could have rung itself to perdition and back -- the call was unlikely to be anything so important that it couldn't wait ten minutes.

"Hello?" she queried. "Ah. Oh, I beg your pardon -- I was a little distance from the phone, and it took me a while to reach it. I hope that you were not inconvenienced."

The liquid began to slow its turbid swirling, deepening in colour.

"Why, yes, I will be available tonight. Medical specimens? Of course, that will be no trouble at all. And -- oh? Those two? Certainly, I have no problems working with them."

Drop after drop.

"Yes -- just a moment, please." She walked across the room to where her computer was sitting, and brought her email account up on the screen. "Yes, I have just received the email you mention. I will stop by this afternoon to collect the documents for the handover and procedures. Thank you very much, that will work nicely. I believe we can move your cargo to the schedule you require."

Maps and data blossomed on the computer screen in intricate patterns.

"Of course. That is part of the standard deal. We're very well known in the business, I assure you. We get the job done. No excuses. No stoppages. No problems for you."

She clicked the phone shut, and turned back to her glass apparatus. There was time to refine, bottle and stopper the latest scent before her appointment this afternoon. From what she had been told, it would be a good thing to be prepared.

That was all part of being a professional, after all.


	3. Chapter Three

Ginji sighed and looked up from the morning's notes. They'd been halfway round the district already, checking all the reliable and unreliable sources they had, and he _ached_ for a nice platter of sushi. But look, here was Rena, with a plate piled high with ham sandwiches. What a pity Ban was out there making sure the parking meter was paid up for once. He'd have to be sure to save his partner some sandwiches. Well, at least two. Perhaps one.

"Here you are," Rena said softly, putting the plate on the table. Her eyes were soft and dark with concern. "Ginji-san . . ."

Ginji held himself back from grabbing a sandwich, caught by something in her tone. "Yes, Rena-chan? What is it?"

She fiddled with the edge of the table, pale fingers and painted nails tapping against the dark wood. "Ginji-san -- I had a dream about you last night. You and the others."

"Sit down, Rena-chan." When she obeyed, Ginji reached across the table to take her hands and stop her nervous twitching. "Tell me about it. It may be important." And that was true -- he believed in dreams in any case, and she'd been one of Lucifer's chosen servants in the whole kami-cards mess before he had been dealt with. Ginji sometimes wondered what had happened to the man afterwards. But it was entirely possible that she might have intimations or premonitions. She'd had power. Even now that particular strength was gone, he could tell that she wasn't entirely powerless.

Rena paused to collect her thoughts. "You were dancing," she said hesitatingly. "You and Ban-san. And Himiko-san. And there were other people there who I know I knew, but I can't remember who they were. There was music, but -- it wasn't formal dancing, nothing like that. It was just dancing."

"Dancing with each other?" Ginji put in when she paused.

Rena shook her head. "No. Just -- dancing. Then the music stopped -- I think there had been drums -- and someone called out about the light, no, it was the sun, saying where did the sun rise and where did it set. And everyone replied, you three as well, and something about opening the way. Then you were all clapping, all at once, like people knocking on the door."

Ginji listened, fascinated.

"There was a smell in the air," she went on, dreamily, eyes fixed on the air as she struggled with the memory. "It smelt like some of the alcohol that the Master has behind the bar. Some of the strong spirits. There were fires in the background. There was a dais, no, an altar towards one end. Someone was standing there. Then Himiko-san was singing, really singing, about opening the way, and she was calling someone's name, but I couldn't understand it, and there was someone behind her who I didn't know but I felt I should know, and then --" She broke off, and shook her head. "Then I woke up."

"You can't remember anything else?" Ginji asked.

Rena shook her head mutely.

"Thank you." He squeezed her hands. "That may be very important. I'm glad you could tell me about it, Rena-chan."

"Ginji!" Ban called from the doorway. "Stop pestering the poor girl and come on! I think we could try -- hey! Are those sandwiches? Were you trying to starve your partner, you --"

"Ban-chan!" Ginji protested, his mouth full of sandwiches as he hastily tried to secure a fair share of the food. Crumbs sprayed across the table. "Rena-chan was just telling me about her --"

"I'll teach you not to steal my food!" Ban howled, and flung himself across the room in a classic tackle, snatching the plate before it could hit the floor and getting Ginji in a headlock mid-pounce.

Rena scurried back to the kitchen, giggling.

* * *

Nearly sunset, and the day had been practically fruitless. Ginji gnawed on his knuckles and brooded. He'd managed to put off actual thoughts about the murder and kidnapping by concentrating on what they were going to do about it, and how they could find out about it, but the dearth of useful information turned his mind more and more towards the image of a friend's body lying in his own blood, and another friend missing and god alone knew what was happening to her, and all the other things that made lightning spark in his veins and dance behind his eyes.

No. No, he wasn't going to go that way. He and Ban _would_ find out what had happened and deal with it appropriately. He clenched his hands around the notebook which he'd been leafing through, trying to find a name on The Invincible Ban-sama's Big List Of Contacts (at least, that was what it said on the front cover) who'd know something about current kidnappings or murders or virtual reality or anti-Mugenjou planning or even if anything big was going down.

Opposite him, Ban tossed aside the local newpaper in a pile of loose pages, and muttered something obscene.

Perhaps this was the wrong moment to ask if he'd found anything useful.

There was a creak as the door swung open. "Boys!" Hevn declaimed, silhouetted in the doorframe as both Ginji and Ban turned to look. The setting sun tinted her pale skin, gilding her long pale arms and bare stomach, lying across her exposed cleavage. She was in rich purple silk today, bandeau and long skirt, with a headscarf twined around her hair and shadowing her face in a seven-pointed dark halo. "I've got some news for you!"

Ban was up on his feet without a moment's pause, twitching with eagerness. "About . . ."

Hevn tilted her head coquettishly as she stepped inside and let the door swing to behind her. "Really, Ban-kun! Would I come to you with anything that wasn't worth bothering about? Yes, it is about what you asked earlier, and yes, I have found out something which might be related, and if it wasn't for the importance of the situation --"

"Yes, yes," Ban broke in. "What is it?"

Hevn bit her lip prettily. "Well, this _may_ be total coincidence . . ."

_But it's not_ , Ginji thought. _I can feel it in my bones._

". . . but I've had word that this evening there's a very important and non-legal cargo going out of this district on a particular route, and as I haven't heard of anything else going on, I think there's at least a good chance that it might be what you want."

"You've got the route, right? And who's taking it?" Ban asked eagerly.

Hevn sighed. Her bosom palpitated magnificently. "That's the bit you're not going to like."

* * *

The rushing evening wind blew Ginji's hair into spikes. He leaned his elbows on the roof of the car, standing up on his seat and with his upper body protruding through the skylight in the car's roof, and squinted ahead into the gathering darkness. "No sign of them yet!" he called down to Ban.

"I know there isn't!" Ban called back from where he was hunched over the steering wheel. "But don't worry, we'll catch up with them soon! And we've still got the nitro-booster equipped!"

Ginji swallowed. "Ban-chan, what if --"

"And my darling little Subaru-360 can't be beaten!" Ban ranted on. "With its V-Max twincam 1200 cm cubed motor, and --"

"Look!" Ginji cried with vast relief, pointing to the lorry that had just loomed into sight. "There they are!"

"Fine." Ban stamped on the accelerator. "Get that flag out!"

Ginji reached down into the back seat, and pulled up a tablecloth which they'd borrowed from the Honky-Tonk. Hopefully it would still be in one piece to return to Paul later. He flapped its white length in the air hopefully, trailing it like a banner. "Truce!" he yelled, mustering all the sincerity he could manage. "Truce! We just want to talk!"

The lorry slowed just as the Subaru jumped forward, and Ginji found himself level with and looking through the window of the lorry as he waved the tablecloth desperately. Himiko was staring out at him calmly, one bottle already between her fingers, but stoppered, still stoppered, so she wasn't going to try anything yet. Mr No-Brake's face was a shadow behind her, turned towards the road ahead and focused on it as much as any man with his lover.

"Himiko-san!" Ginji called again. "We need to talk!"

The lorry groaned and slowed, and Himiko wound down the window. "What are you two after?" she shouted down to Ban and Ginji from her higher position in the lorry. "Is this some sort of trick?" A darker figure drifted into silhouette behind her, leaning over her shoulder in a flow of black trenchcoat.

"No trick!" Ginji steadied himself in the Subaru. The wind dragged at the tablecloth, trying to snatch it from his fingers. "It's about a friend of ours! You know her -- her name is Ren, the pharmacist's granddaughter from Mugenjou! Are you carrying her?"

Himiko blinked. "Her? No! We've got medical specimens, that's all."

"Are you sure?" Ban leaned out through his window, ignoring the road for the moment, and stared up at Himiko through narrowed eyes. "Definitely?"

"Would it make a difference if we were, Midou-kun?" Akabane's whisper carried over the sounds of wind and car and lorry, and Ginji shivered. "If you felt it necessary to fight us over this . . ."

"Truce! Truce!" Ginji yelled desperately, waving the flag up and down as vigorously as he could. He could hear Akabane laughing.

"Yeah, well -- if you were told that it was medical specimens you were carrying, and it's actually a kidnapped girl, where does that leave you, Himiko?" Ban leaned one elbow on the car's window frame, and grinned cheerfully up at the lorry window. "Now I'm not going to tell a _professional_ like you how to handle things, but if you've been lied to about the cargo, correct me if I'm wrong, but that breaks the contract, doesn't it?"

Himiko hesitated, then shifted in her seat to look up at Akabane. "He has a point, Doctor Jackal. If we have been lied to about what we're carrying, then we are no longer obliged to abide by the terms of the contract."

Mr No-Brake grunted something, but Ginji couldn't catch it over the noise of the lorry wheels. He did hear part of Akabane's answer. "-- of course, Lady Poison, if one chooses to abide by the letter of the contract . . ."

"Hey!" Ban shouted, getting both Akabane's and Himiko's attention. "You want the other side of this? You really want it getting around that two -- three -- of the best transporters in the business could be lied to and manipulated into carrying a false cargo?"

"If it is only medical specimens, we've got no reason to stop you!" Ginji added, trying to think of something that'd convince Akabane to go along with it. "We'll just leave -- we won't do anything to slow you down or get in the way -- but if you just take a look at the cargo, if you can come back and tell us for sure it's not Ren --"

"Bah." Himiko unsnapped her seatbelt, and slipped out of her seat, wriggling past Akabane, who nodded politely to her as he slid smoothly into the vacated space. "Ban! Ginji! I'll go _look_ at the cargo -- there was nothing in the contract about us not checking it to make sure it was in acceptable condition. But if it's just specimens, then not only do you get your tails the hell out of here, but you owe us one! Right, Akabane, Mr No-Brake?"

"Entirely acceptable," Akabane agreed smoothly.

"Deal," Mr No-Brake grunted. The lorry slowed another notch, slipping down a gear.

With a sigh of relief, Ginji stuffed the tablecloth back down into the Subaru, and concentrated on standing up straight and not letting his knees tremble at the thought of what Akabane might consider a suitable favour.

Akabane leaned on the window frame, one hand holding his hat in position against the gusts of wind. His hair blew out to frame his face. "So, what is this, Ginji-kun? Why should your friend Ren have been kidnapped?"

"We don't know!" Ginji resisted the urge to slide back into the car and let Ban handle the dialogue. _Better if Akabane-san is talking with us than fighing us . . ._ "Her grandfather Gen was killed and she was kidnapped, but we don't know yet who did it!"

Incredibly, Akabane frowned. "Gen the pharmacist was killed?" he inquired in tones of mild puzzlement. "Are you certain?"

Ginji nodded frantically. "He was killed some time last night. They found his body this morning. Makubex is investigating . . ."

Himiko reentered the lorry cab, and murmured something to Mr No-Brake. The lorry slowed and came to a rumbling stop.

Ban slammed on the Subaru's brakes, and was jumping out of the car before Ginji could extricate himself from his half-in, half-out position, or the way that the emergency stop had left him folded over the car's roof. "So! Were we right?"

Himiko gave him a quick nod, then turned to the two men in the cab with her. "Doctor Jackal, Mr No-Brake, I apologise. I am afraid that we have been lied to by our principal. The case in the back holds a young woman who certainly looks like Ren the pharmacist's granddaughter from Mugenjou."

"Mmm." Akabane settled back in his seat, adjusting his hat. "Of course, one could argue that technically speaking, she _is_ a medical specimen -- according to some standards." But there was something underlying his tone which caught Ginji's attention.

_He wants to be persuaded. He's curious about something. He isn't going to break his usual cover by admitting it, or tell us what's going on, but he's genuinely curious._ "A medical specimen has to be physically, um, real, doesn't it, Akabane-san?" he offered, then quailed as Akabane's gaze moved to him. _He wouldn't actually attack me without warning me first, he doesn't play any other way . . ._

"It is hard to see how it could be otherwise, Ginji-kun," Akabane agreed politely.

"Right," Ban said firmly, in a that-settles-that tone. "Ren from Mugenjou is virtual. She's not physically real. Which means that if the person in the back of your van is Ren, then she's not a medical specimen. And if it's not Ren, then we apologise and will leave you to get on with things. But the only way to find out . . ."

". . . is to wake her up and ask her," Himiko agreed. For a moment, despite the professional overlay of calm responsibility, the relief was clear on her face. "Would you agree, gentlemen?"

"Huh. Guess so," Mr No-Brake contributed. One hand stroked the smooth curve of the lorry's steering wheel. "I'll go with the majority on this one."

"And I believe I agree as well." Akabane slid from the seat, rising to stand beside Himiko. "I see no other convenient resolution to the problem."

Ban shot a glance at Ginji, and Ginji read in his partner's eyes, _This is all too easy. Watch your back._

Ginji nodded, and levered himself out of the car. "Fine. Let's do it."


	4. Chapter Four

Kazuki settled down in the chair, and folded his hands in his lap, looking up at Juubei and Toshiki. They both stood near the door, each carefully avoiding each other's personal territory, not risking a step into the other's private space. The investigations had taken most of the day, yet Kazuki was the only one who sat down; the other two remained on their feet, watching him, watching each other.

"Well," he said briskly. "What have we discovered?"

Juubei spoke first. "The door wasn't forced, Kazuki-sama. Either the lock was picked --"

"And there weren't any obvious scratches on it, so if it was picked, then it was done by an expert," Toshiki added with what seemed like just a touch of smugness.

"-- or it was opened normally," Juubei went on patiently. "And since everyone round here keeps their doors locked as a matter of course, this suggests that Gen opened it willingly."

"Which argues that either he did not know there was a threat, or he did not expect it from this particular person." Kazuki nodded thoughtfully. "Please go on."

Juubei gestured across the room to the bookcase which stood ajar, showing a slice of the bloodstained map room beyond. "Gen kept his work secret, Kazuki-sama; and yet he was found in that room, and the murder clearly took place there. This suggests that he trusted his guest enough to invite him in that far."

"The killer could have pursued him," Toshiki suggested.

Juubei shook his head. "There were no signs of a chase, and besides, Kazuki-sama has said that room takes a few moments for the door to open. He would not have run in there if he was being pursued, surely. He would have made for the door, or called for help."

Kazuki found himself agreeing with that. "And he died within reach of his computer, but not in the attitude of a man who had been running. It came as a surprise."

"Unfortunately, the computer is . . ." Toshiki spread his hands. "We've been told that even Makubex cannot get any data from it. All the files have been wiped, the system is corrupt, the email cache is empty -- even the browsers have no cookies in them."

"Very thorough." Kazuki frowned. "I wonder why he, whoever it was, didn't just destroy it."

"It's very hard to destroy a computer physically, short of fire or smashing it to pieces," Juubei put in, his voice suddenly more assured. _Of course_ , Kazuki thought, _the time under Makubex._ "In some ways it'd be safer to use a worm on it. A virus of some sort. Though to create a virus that would surpass anything Makubex could do . . ."

"That's a clue in itself," Kazuki murmured.

Juubei frowned. "Is it not a little obvious, in that case?"

"Mmm. I'm not sure." Kazuki flexed his fingers against each other. "How did you two get on with the witnesses?"

Toshiki walked across to the table by which Kazuki was sitting, and tapped a stack of papers. "These are their accounts of what they saw. Nobody saw anyone actually enter or leave here. We do have three definite witnesses of "the man in the white coat" approaching the apartment; the first is in the second south block just after midnight, the second in the southwest block, third floor, corridor area, somewhere between midnight and one a.m., and the third was quite close to this apartment, at approximately one-thirty a.m. Two witnesses of his departure, which seems to have been roughly along the same axis; one at two a.m., who saw him carrying a young woman matching Ren's description, and another at four a.m. near the lower south block exit, by the cloth market. She was the one who mentioned that Ren was wearing some sort of jewellery."

Kazuki sighed. "There is something which I need to explain to you both, before we go any further."

Both of them looked curious -- Toshiki more obviously so, Juubei apparently still calm and placid as ever, but with the edge of keenness visible to those who knew him well.

"Ren was virtual." It was amazing how easy it was to speak the words, but still how hard it was to believe them. "She is like Makubex, like many others within these walls. She is a virtual entity. What was thought to be jewellery must have actually been some form of technology which allowed her to be taken outside."

Juubei's body tensed, then relaxed again. _Yes_ , Kazuki thought. _He would understand the full implications._

Toshiki blinked, then said, "Virtual? You mean, that is, computer generated? But _how_?"

Kazuki shrugged. "Something to do with Babylon City."

"Then is all of this," Toshiki waved towards the door of Gen's map room, "to do with Babylon City too?"

Kazuki frowned. Memories of his one visit to the Beltline, that place which had daunted even the Prince of Battle Terror, shadowed the back of his mind for a moment. And what about the realms above it, the dwelling place of such individuals as Kagami Kyoji? What indeed? "I . . ." He hesitated. "The fact that Ren was taken away from here suggests that it isn't them instigating it. But Gen himself had something to do with the place. I don't know."

The phone rang.

All three of them looked towards it.

It rang a second time.

Toshiki was the first to move, but Kazuki was the first to reach it, snatching the receiver up with a smooth elegance which belied his haste. "Hello?" he asked, lowering his voice to as close a register to Gen's as he could manage. Toshiki and Juubei both halted themselves mid-pace, nearly colliding.

Makubex's voice said, "Hello? Kazuki-san, is that you?"

"Ah." Kazuki coughed, embarassed, and let his voice rise to its normal register. "Yes, it is me. Good afternoon, Makubex," he added for the benefit of the other two in the room. "Can I be of any assistance?"

"I think it's more that I can be of some assistance to you now," Makubex replied. The boy's light tones were as calm and uninflected as usual. "I've been plotting the surveillance cameras, trying to work out what paths the intruder could have followed to have remained unnoticed while they were malfunctioning. Does Juubei still have the palm pilot I gave him?"

Kazuki looked at Juubei. "Palm pilot?" he inquired.

Juubei fished in one of the large pockets of his loose shirt, brought out a small palm pilot, and nodded.

"Yes," Kazuki replied. "He's got it."

"Excellent. Please have him plug it into the phone line in five minutes precisely, and I'll download the data. There are a couple of vectors of possibility. There's something else, as well."

"Please go on," Kazuki said.

There was a pause at the other end of the phone. Had it been someone else, Kazuki might have construed it as guilt. "Ah -- that is . . ." Makubex hesitated. "I did receive occasional fragments of information from Gen's online work."

_You spied on him_ , Kazuki thought, then suppressed the feeling of disgust. Gen had been the only real father Makubex had ever known, the home fire he'd returned to, the parent who he'd only been reunited with so recently. Some things were harder to control than others, however logical the thoughts or great the intelligence. "Did you pick up anything interesting lately?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

"There were some fragments of a recent message which didn't correlate to anything else," Makubex said bluntly. "It begins, "While you have chosen not to interfere with us, we shall not threaten you . . ." Most of the middle's lost. It ends with, "The Marassa have been activated and the end of the Project nears.""

Kazuki sighed softly. "That's very vague."

"Well, yes. I can see that much." For a moment, Makubex's voice betrayed frustration. "For what it's worth, I thought I'd let you know, in case. Anyhow, I'll be transmitting the map and camera data in a moment. Thank you, Kazuki-san."

"Think nothing of it," Kazuki said. "Gen was my friend as well, Makubex. And Ren should have been one of my people. I should have been there."

"I know," Makubex whispered. "Yes. I know what you mean."

The phone went dead.

Kazuki carefully settled the phone down again. "Juubei, please plug your palm pilot in to take a download. And -- " He recounted Makubex' message, then added, not very hopefully, "Does that mean anything to either of you?"

Juubei shook his head as he plugged the small device in, but Toshiki frowned. "Marassa?" he repeated. "Are you sure?"

"That was what Makubex said. Although we cannot be sure of the pronounciation, if he only read it on an email. Why, does it mean something to you?"

"Possibly." Toshiki's frown deepened. "If it was the Marassa . . ." He pronounced it in an European way, stressing the second syllable. "That's a term from voodoo, or voodoun, or whatever you call it --"

Juubei looked up from his palm pilot. "Surely you do not mean all that business with zombies and rag dolls and pins?"

"Well, among other things." Toshiki looked vaguely embarrassed. "It was something which he -- Lucifer -- was interested in. While it wasn't his main course of action, I think he did use some material from it while working on the cards."

"So what is the Marassa, Uryuu?" Kazuki tried to give it the same pronounciation that Toshiki had used. "Is it some sort of spell?"

In the background, the palm pilot beeped and turned itself off.

"Not precisely," Toshiki answered. "If I remember properly, and I may be wrong, Kazuki-sama, it's actually one of the voodoo divinities. A pair of twins. A sort of, um, symbol of symbiotic opposition, both male and female, both divine and mortal -- I don't remember them as being actively malign, just, well, as existing."

Kazuki filed Toshiki's suddenly formal mode of address for later consideration. _Does he really feel it that necessary to remind me that he is my man again, and that Lucifer is gone for good? Perhaps . . . and if so, how should I try to convince him that I believe him?_ "Mm. So maybe this is a code term for a pair of agents. We'll have to be careful. Thank you, Uryuu."

Toshiki nodded, a quick smile passing over his face. "Glad it helped."

Juubei coughed, and held out the palm pilot for inspection. "Kazuki-sama, Makubex has plotted the cameras that went dead last night. Allowing for a certain amount of natural wastage --"

"Natural wastage?" Toshiki interrupted.

"Cameras that people would have broken anyhow," Juubei translated. "In any case, while there is a clear route of passage from Gen's door to the exit which we have already marked, he has also tried to show any other paths which would have been open to someone wanting to leave this area and avoid all cameras en route."

"And are there any?" Kazuki queried.

"Actually, there is one possibility." Juubei tapped the screen of the palm pilot with the end of one of his needles. "If you were to leave here, and take this corridor, and then . . ."

* * *

Toshiki followed Juubei and Kazuki down the alley between buildings, conscious of the quick glances from higher balconies, the flicks of curtains across windows, as though shielding themselves from those who passed could make the inhabitants somehow safe from their world of quick life and quicker death. This wasn't a safe place in any case; it was close to the Beltline, which was one of the reasons why there were fewer cameras here. However fast Makubex had workers replace them, intrusions from the Beltline or casual vandalism destroyed them.

There had been no report of progress from the GetBackers. Perhaps this meant they were hot on the trail. He hoped so.

The sunset light edged the buildings with blood, and the swirling clouds in the sky above marked heaven with the pattern of a seal in red and gold and grey, locked and barred against the people below. Sealed doors, sealed windows, no answers, no hope . . . with an effort he pulled himself back from the sudden temptation to despair, as cold air brushed past him and ran down the alley to rattle garbage and whisper against closed shutters.

Had it always been this bad here, or had he just never noticed?

There was a trickle of amused laughter from above them, high and boyish. He slipped into an easy, loose-limbed posture of readiness as he looked up, vaguely conscious of Juubei moving to do the same thing, getting himself between Kazuki and danger. _I'll give Juubei this much_ , he thought. _He'd never hesitate to step between Kazuki and an oncoming blade. Never._

Above, perched on a protruding chunk of masonry at the level of the third story or so, sat Kanou Jouya. The boy laughed again, with that slightly mocking, slightly uncertain touch of amusement that he'd always been so prone to in the past.

"Were you looking for me, Kanou-kun?" Kazuki inquired politely.

_It's been a while._ Toshiki had never been close to the boy -- he'd kept his eyes on Kazuki, and his hands in Kazuki's service, and Kanou had been interested in Masaki first and Volts second, and they'd not really come into any sort of contact other than the most general. For him to crop up here and now, however, was -- suspicious. Yes, suspicious was an extremely good word for it.

"Isn't it more what you're looking for, Kazuki-san?" Kanou asked in turn. Toshiki felt his hackles rising at the courtesy of the question, and at the utter lack of genuine respect which he could feel behind it. "One doesn't normally see you here. Not up quite so close to the Beltline. Even with your lieutenants to support you." There was obscenity meant through the words, mild as they were.

"Kanou-kun!" There was sudden iron in Kazuki's voice, sharp and dark. "I find that I dislike your attitude, and I have certain questions to ask you."

Kanou smirked. With a flick of a hand he drew one of the large fans which hung at his left side, and brought it round with a blast of wind, in time to slap down the needles which were flying through the air towards him at Kazuki's words, spraying them into an arc against the wall. "And I -- must decline. Till later, Kazuki-san." He sprang to his feet, and began running up the balconies which scarred the side of the building like acid-ruined lace, jumping from one to another, his fans flirting around him like a mosquito's wings.

Toshiki was already moving, a fraction behind Juubei's needles. If Kanou wanted to go up and over, at this point, then there were only two possible paths that he could take down again from there. Either Kazuki or Juubei could cover this one, and the other could take care of the first path down, and he'd be waiting by the third. He rather hoped that Kanou would try to get past him. Not only was he quite certain that he could take the arrogant brat, but it would be a pleasure to explain _before_ he dragged him back to Kazuki that further language of that sort would -- not -- be -- tolerated.

He took the first turning lightly, spinning and jumping to reach the top of a wall and run along it, then catching the edge of a railing and using it as pivot to take him round and up to the next level. Still nobody out on the street, nobody looking through their windows; silence was lying thickly upon the place, broken only by the sound of running footsteps from two other points, which he mentally mapped and coordinated himself against. _So he's taking the first path, which probably means he'll run into Juubei or Kazuki, damn it._ But he didn't slow. He could be mistaken.

The evening air sparkled in the space of roof to his left, clearer by far than the bloody sunset light, and --

\-- _danger diamonds Kazuki said Juubei said the man from Babylon City_ \--

\-- something which Toshiki did not consciously process or even fully understand sent him rolling to the right, flowing along the balcony in a smooth flex of his body, and brought him up with his hands crossed in front of his body and chi blasting out at that conveniently empty space of roof.

The air shifted and shattered. Three men stood there; no, the same man, but three times over, each time with the same spotlessly white suit, the same glinting earring swinging in the evening wind, the same bland amused smile. "Hell Knight Toshiki Uryuu," all three of them said. "It would seem your reputation is deserved."

This must be Kagami Kyoji. Possibly Makubex's servant, possibly not; possibly Babylon City's spy, possibly not. He'd seen him briefly towards the end of the Kiryuudo affair, and hadn't wanted to get any closer. Kazuki had mentioned something about mirror images, and something about diamond dust . . . He raised his hands to in front of his face, summoning his chi again. "I don't think I have any business with you, Kagami-san," he said politely.

"Ah. But you have. I, Kagami Kyoji, am your opponent today, Hell Knight Toshiki Uryuu." The other man's voice was a light tenor, flowing and gently modulated, as well-bred and persuasive as any expert negotiator.

In the distance, Toshiki could hear the sounds of battle.

That meant he was on his own.

This was a trap.

There wasn't any more need for posturing or questions. Kanou had been the lure, and this trap had been set for one of them -- he couldn't be sure which of them, yet, but it wasn't really important. Once he'd taken Kagami down, they could question him together with Kanou, and find out of this was related to Gen's death, or just unfortunate in its timing. The most important thing was to stop himself breathing in any of that damned diamond dust stuff. He slammed his hands together and released a burst of chi directly in front of his face, in hopes that it would clear the air, then snatched the sash from his waist and wound it over his mouth and nose, eyes on Kagami.

All three of the Kagami-images clapped their hands approvingly. (He couldn't assume that any of them were real. The real Kagami might be anywhere. He'd heard that much about the man.) "Very good," the middle one said. "You are well-informed."

"If not well enough," said another voice behind him, and glass sliced a line across his back. "Diamond Dust . . ."

Toshiki dived for the street, turning and curving in mid-air, landing at a roll and a run, hands raised in a defensive position. Light glared above him as he caught his breath, and the air in the street seemed to fluctuate as though it were molten glass. A dozen images of Kagami now stood looking down at him, pale against the bloody twilight sky.

He could feel the slow hot crawl of blood down his back.

The multiple versions of Kagami moved towards him like the reflections in a kaleidoscope, circling round then closing in, brightness glinting between their fingers in razor-sharp shards of glass. They were following a pattern, and that gave him hope. It was just one more rhythm to analyse, one more dance to unwind -- he was _good_ at that. He jumped for the top of a ledge, for space, ignoring the thin slicing cuts that ripped at his black top and drew blood from his torso and arms, and he could see the centre of the dance, the point which all the other reflections moved around.

_There._ "Murasame School Palm Technique -- Battlefield Taiko!" he yelled, the force thrumming through his body in hard pulses, and brought his chi slamming out at that centre, focusing it on the Kagami who stood there with his eyes widening in sudden surprise.

Glass exploded, and the street was empty.

The strength of the blow that hit him from behind threw him to his knees, left his head swimming. Toshiki gasped for air, trying to bring himself up and round to counter the next blow that he knew would be coming, but it took him squarely in the stomach and threw him arcing backwards to land in a mass of rubble and glass, to feel each separate shard prick his flesh. He was struggling to his feet again, but now Kagami was on him and forcing him down, a knee planted in his stomach, one pale hand closing over his throat while the other grasped his wrists and held them pinned over his head. The scarf around his face had come loose and lay in folds across his neck, leaving him with nothing between him and Kagami above, edged in red-stained light as the sun sank, the light in the air, the sparkles so bright that they burned his eyes and made him close them as he sank into darkness . . .

Kagami's voice. "We know you, Hell Knight. I've seen what you do, and how you do it."

. . . Kazuki, he had to warn Kazuki . . .

"But I enjoyed the dance."

. . . Kagami's hands were strong and the light was going away . . .

"Hush and listen to the drumbeats of your pulse, Hell Knight Uryuu Toshiki."

The frantic beating of his heart took him down into darkness.


	5. Chapter Five

"Explain," said Himiko. She was still ruffled from the whole ridiculous chase. Not to mention that white flag business. What sort of professional drove around the place while waving a tablecloth and shouting, "Peace and love!" It was as bad as that character from Trigun. Worse. Putting aside thoughts of knives and what she'd like to do with them, she folded her arms sternly and stared at Ban and Ginji. From behind her, she could feel Akabane delivering his patent I-am-picking-the-best-place-to-gut-you considering glance over her shoulder.

All right, watching the two boys try to hide behind each other was moderately entertaining.

She decided that Ban was the more likely of the two to give a coherent answer, even if Ginji was more likely to give a truthful one. Mr No-Brake was busy working on opening the case that Ren was in, which he'd said was going to take a while. Too many complicated locks and too many circuits. There was a small panel in the side, which is how she'd been able to look inside, but the actual fastenings were far more complex than that. Corrosion Scent might have been faster, but it might also have damaged something, and Mr No-Brake had a remarkably light touch with technology. "What's going on, Ban?" she asked.

Ban met her gaze flatly. "We've got a murder and a kidnapping, Himiko. What I want to know is, how are _you_ lot involved?"

She settled her fists on her hips, uncomfortably aware that she was settling back into the old pattern of accusation and counter-accusation, but unable for the moment to break it. "We're just doing our job. We were hired to transport that," she nodded towards the case with a jerk of her head, "to -- well, that's beside the point. If your perpetrator hired the best that there is to do the job, that's not _our_ fault."

"Indeed not," Akabane murmured from behind her. "Gratified as I am to indulge Ginji-kun's curiosity . . ."

Himiko swore mentally yet again that she'd never tell Ban and Ginji quite how much she enjoyed watching Akabane put them on edge. Especially the way that Ginji shrank and started making little squeaking noises.

". . . I cannot help but feel that a full exchange of information is in order." There was a whisper of fabric as he shrugged. "To show our trust in you, we will be glad to go first. Lady Poison?"

He was such a bastard at times. "Of course," she said. Part of organising a mission involving Doctor Jackal was knowing when one could assert one's authority and when one should go along with what he suggested. She'd learned that a while ago. "I got the contact through the usual phone number --"

"You got the contact?" Ban interrupted.

"Of course," she repeated, trying not to roll her eyes. As if anyone would call Doctor Jackal to _organise_ a mission -- undertake one, certainly, but if Ban could imagine Akabane doing the nitty-gritty work of timing and contacts and payoffs, then he had a better imagination than she'd ever given him credit for. "There's a particular phone number that people in the business use if they're contacting me for a mission. That was the one that got called. They wanted us -- they specified Doctor Jackal and Mr No-Brake, as well -- to take medical specimens down to Kyoto. We were to hand them over there. I met our contact this afternoon to get the precise details and arrange the payment."

Ban perked up and waved his hands invitingly. "Details, details! I'm sure even a brat like you must have noticed something useful --"

"I can give full and precise details," Himiko said through gritted teeth. "I was meeting him at an, ah, hotel in the city --" She hastily tried to think of a way of putting it that wouldn't give Ban a chance to amuse himself.

"Location?" Ban interrupted, much as she'd feared he would.

With a mental sigh, Himiko reeled off the district, street, and number. No reaction from any of them. Good, perhaps they didn't kno the place. "So I turned up on time . . ."

"Wait," Ginji broke in. "Isn't that an, um, you know? One of those love hotels?"

Himiko was aware that her face was flaming, while Ban started to snicker. "It is a convenient place to meet contacts," she informed Ginji icily. "Especially when you want to make it look just like a usual meeting between two people." Inspiration seized her. "And how come you know where it is, anyhow?"

"Oh, Ban took me there," Ginji started, but was cut off by Ban's elbow hard in his side.

"On a case," Ban said brusquely. "That cheese sandwich one. Which reminds me, what the hell were _you_ doing trying to get the sandwich?"

"Commission," Himiko replied, and folded her arms. "Have you any idea of how rare that thing was? Especially after it went up on ebay. We had a very nice contract indeed to transport it. In good condition. Which is more than it would have been, the way you were carrying it round in wrapping paper. Wrapping paper," she repeated, still hardly able to believe it. "Have you no damn idea about how to carry a sandwich around properly?"

Akabane coughed behind her.

"Anyhow," she hastily resumed, before Ban or Ginji could interrupt again, "the contact was already there. He looked like a freelancer himself, not a businessman or scientist, so I did suspect that the medical specimens might not be strictly legal -- but that's not our problem. He paid the usual half cash down beforehand, promise of half cash afterwards. That's fairly standard."

Akabane nodded. "Lady Poison is correct."

"So what did he look like?" Ban asked.

Himiko's eyes narrowed as she focused on the memory. "Tall -- taller than you, Ban, about Doctor Jackal's height, but broader in the shoulders and heavier build. Dark hair, to the shoulders, worn loose. White overcoat with shoulder-capes. Deep voice. Deep-set eyes. Professional controlled air with that undertone that shrieks professional killer."

Ban muttered something that might have been, "Well, you'd know."

Himiko decided to be adult and ignore him. "Long case over his shoulder -- I assumed it held his weapon or weapons, but I didn't get a chance to look at it. Dark sober clothing otherwise. Long-fingered hands. Paused occasionally in the conversation as though he was trying to think something through."

"Or as if he was talking to himself?" Ginji suggested.

Himiko frowned. "Could be," she agreed grudgingly. It had seemed a little like that at times. She'd tried not to stare too much. "He recognised me, and he knew who he was dealing with."

Ban looked over her shoulder at Akabane. "Do you think --?"

"It certainly matches his description," Akabane agreed. "Would you agree, Ginji-kun?"

Ginji nodded seriously, not twitching this time. "It sounds exactly like him. Himiko-chan -- there weren't any other people there, were there? Male or female, probably looking a lot like him, wearing the same sort of white coat?"

Himiko shook her head. "No. But you all clearly know this man. Who is it?"

"What name did he give you?" Ban countered.

She shrugged. "Teshimine. That was all."

"That's impossible!" Ginji snapped, in a sudden burst of Raitei-like temper.

Ban grabbed his friend's arm. "He just used his name, Ginji. It doesn't mean anything -- unless it means that he's involved with Mugenjou somehow."

"It sounds increasingly that way," Akabane agreed. There was a snapping noise from where Mr No-Brake was working on the crate. "But there may be some more concrete evidence by now. Shall we?"

The group hastily reassembled around the case. Mr No-Brake didn't bother to look up, but merely grunted, and set his crowbar under the last fastening. It came off with a resounding snap, burying itself in the ground half an inch from Ban's foot. "There," he said finally. "That'll do it. You can take the lid off now."

Ban and Ginji leaned forward and got their fingers under the lid. With a vigorous heave they toppled it off onto the ground on the other side. Akabane drifted back half a pace in order to avoid having his feet crushed, and peered down curiously.

The case was empty.

"But I saw her in there!" Himiko protested.

"Hologram," Mr No-Brake stated. "There, there, and there." He pointed at the circuitry which lined the interior of the case. "Straightforward surround projection. Could probably even adjust itself for external factors, so that if you looked inside through the window you'd see what you should be able to see depending on the positioning of the case. Perfectly straightforward."

Ban frowned. "It couldn't be anything more complex, could it? Maybe something that could have maintained a virtual interior?"

Mr No-Brake shook his head. "Nah. Don't think so. Nice work, and I'd like to look it over more closely, but it's just straight hologram technology. Nothing special."

Akabane's mouth curved into what was only technically a smile. "It would seem that we have been played for fools and used as lures, Lady Poison."

Himiko could feel the same anger mounting inside her. "It would." This was unendurable. Who _dared_ to do something like that? She hadn't spent the last three years in hard work and danger just to be tagged and sent cross-country with a fake cargo in order to lead the GetBackers, of all people, on a false trail. "So who _was_ this person who I met who you all seemed to recognise?"

"Oh, he was Miroku Natsuhiko," Ginji explained. "At least that's who he sounds like. He's got six siblings and he works as a bodyguard a lot. The problem is . . ."

"The problem," Ban continued, when Ginji showed no sign of doing so, "is that we've got descriptions that make it sound as if he was involved in old man Gen's murder and Ren's kidnapping. So with him being the person who hired you, that sounds fairly conclusive."

"It would explain why the contact was made through Lady Poison," Akabane put in. "She has never met him before and would not necessarily recognise him. However -- you say that he committed freelance murder and kidnapping, Midou-kun? That hardly sounds like him."

"He can define the whole "bodyguard" thing very widely," Ban said briefly. "If it suits him."

"Yes, Ban, but Yukihiko -- " Ginji put in.

"Yukihiko wouldn't necessarily have a say in it!" Ban snapped. "You don't think that it's usually Natsuhiko just because he's the oldest, do you? It's because he --" He bit the words off. "Besides, maybe someone's controlling him."

"Yukihiko?" Himiko asked. "I thought you said Natsuhiko."

"There are seven of them, Lady Poison," Akabane explained. "But you only ever see one of them at any time."

As explanations went, Himiko felt, that lacked a certain something. She frowned, trying to gauge the possible trails. "We've got two options that I can see," she said. "One is that we go ahead to the arranged rendezvous to see if we can find out anything there. But if we were just intended as a diversion, then they might not be there. The other is that we try to backtrack Miroku Natsuhiko. Haven't you always said that Miss Negotiator can find anyone if you need her to, Ban?"

Ban shrugged. "I can try Hevn, sure. But I think we're missing something. Why bother having a decoy, especially as expensive and dangerous a decoy as you guys --"

"Why, thank you, Midou-kun," Akabane murmured.

"-- if it's not to hide something else?" Ban continued determinedly. "Either they moved Ren in the other direction out of Tokyo, or . . ."

". . . or they didn't move her at all," Ginji completed the sentence, eyes narrowing. "She may still be inside Mugenjou."

Himiko shook her head. "Can't see it. We know how good Makubex's computers and cameras are. If she were inside Mugenjou, he'd see her."

"Not if he didn't know to look." Ban's eyes sparkled with growing enthusiasm, and against her will, Himiko found herself grinning in response. This was how it had been, then. The wild ideas, thrown between the three of them like a ball that had to stay in the air as long as possible, spinning higher with each new suggestion. The possibility. The sense of the hunt. "Computer boy can't scan _everything_. What he does is make algorithms that'd scan for relevant material, then look at what the system brings him. If he thinks Ren's left the building, he doesn't bother to look for her. Convincing him that she was out of the place is the only way he'd stop looking. And if they've moved her to somewhere camera-free in the place while his attention's elsewhere, they're safe."

"Mugenjou is a large place," Akabane agreed. "And Ginji-kun is the only one here who knows it well . . ."

Himiko frowned so hard that she could feel the wrinkles in her forehead. "Ginji, just a moment. Don't answer till I've finished this." She held up both hands. "I'm trying to remember some things. I'm going to tell you a list of things, and I want you to tell me if there's anywhere particular in Mugenjou where you could expect to find all of them."

Ginji's eyes widened, then narrowed in comprehension. He nodded, waiting.

_So assuming that Miroku Natsuhiko came directly from Mugenjou to the hotel where I met him, and assuming that any odours on him were from where he had last been in Mugenjou . . ._ "Chalk," she said, remembering. "Calcium carbonate, plain chalk, the white sort. Gunpowder. Ink." Those had been the obvious ones. She struggled to remember more. "Saffron. Fresh saffron, not dried. Indian tea, taken black. Ink -- the sort you'd use in a computer printer. Fresh blood."

"He smelt of blood and you didn't notice anything _odd_?" Ban demanded.

Himiko shrugged. "A lot of people I know do, Ban. Should I start making judgements?" She looked over at Ginji hopefully.

Ginji was nodding. "There's only one place in Mugenjou that you could buy saffron fresh, Himiko-chan. You could get most of the other stuff there as well. The Spice Market, down in the basement of the West Block." He glanced around at the others, then shrugged. "I think it's worth a try."

* * *

Ban was concentrating on current events rather than on the road. He was confident in his ability to keep driving, no matter how close to the edge of the road his car might wander. That, and the fact that Ginji would scream and grab his shoulder if they got into any real danger.

"Any luck?" he asked again.

"None, Ban-chan." Ginji sighed, and shook the cellphone hopefully, as though that might persuade it to make the connection. Makubex was out of touch. Ban wasn't sure whether to blame this on the phone -- perhaps buying the cheapest model _had_ been a false economy after all -- or Mugenjou, or some external interference. Of course, he'd never tried phoning computer boy before, but then again, why should computer boy have given Ginji his phone number if he was unphoneable? Or was this some sort of knock-on effect from whatever had messed with the place's cameras last night?

Ahead, Mr No-Brake's lorry turned off to the left. He followed it, still thinking.

"See if you can get Hevn," he directed Ginji. Hevn, after all, probably had the best phone technology available, stuffed into her huge handbag or her even huger bosom. "We'll keep on trying Makubex, but if we can't reach him, then she'll probably be able to get a message through by email or something."

Ginji's face brightened at this solution to the problem. "Sure, Ban-chan!"

As Ginji dialled, Ban mused. He was concerned. Not just about himself or Ginji, but about Himiko, and about how Akabane was involved in this. Doctor Jackal had an interest of some sort in what was going on, that was obvious. Was it Gen's name that had made him stop and listen earlier? Ban rather thought so. He'd run through the brief facts that they had before they started back to Tokyo and Mugenjou, and Akabane's face had been as still and as dangerous as the winter ocean with a killing undertow beneath the surface. What could the two have had in common? Something medical, perhaps? Something to do with Babylon City?

And then there was Himiko. At least the brat had listened to him this time, rather than got into a temper and flown off in some sort of hysterical fury. Leaving aside the question of her having meetings with Miroku Natsuhiko in love hotels (in fact, he wanted a word with her about the whole having assignations in love hotels business, at some point when Akabane wasn't there to stare over her shoulder and make helpful comments), he just wished she wasn't involved. She was competent. He wasn't arguing that point. He wasn't even going to bring up the way she'd taken to wearing gloves like the Witch of Poisons avatar on those cards -- what business of his was it how she used her powers, after all? Or the way she'd calmly decided that she was going to be involved in this because of the damage to _her_ prestige and the fact that she'd known Ren too . . . uncomfortably, Ban realised that this loop of thought was not only going round in circles, it was building a figure-eight train track to do it faster and more efficiently.

This was going to be messy, and she was still the girl he'd promised her brother to protect. _Voodoo Child . . ._ It was that simple and that complicated.

At least Akabane would be some safeguard for her. He'd never thought he'd be grateful for that bastard's presence before.

And then there was the whole question of taking Ginji into Mugenjou. Well, they'd just have to keep this strike nice and quick and surgical, and if it started getting complicated or Babylon City looked like getting involved, then they were damn well pulling out and letting Makubex handle it. He wasn't risking his partner over this.

At least this whole business meant that Ren hadn't been taken out of Mugenjou, which got rid of some of the problems about virtual reality and whatever.

"Ban-chan! What do I tell Hevn!" Ginji had achieved contact, and clamped the phone to his ear as the car rocketed down the road.

Ban thought. "Tell her -- tell her we've made contact with Akabane and Himiko and found out that they'd been hired as a decoy without realising it." Whoever was behind this couldn't have expected that the transporters would have been willing to stop and talk things over, or that the decoy itself would be found out so soon. "Tell her to contact Makubex and let him know that we're going to that Spice Market place to investigate, and ask if he's got any information from Kazuki or the others. And that we've got a fairly positive confirmation on the Miroku. Oh, and anything else she thinks is relevant. And get her to phone us back as soon as possible."

"Right!" Ginji cheered, and started babbling into the phone.

Yes, they'd been remarkably lucky; Hevn getting the information about the transporters, then being able to negotiate with them . . . Ban hoped they wouldn't have to pay for this good luck later.

Ginji finished and snapped the phone shut. "She says be careful, Ban-chan."

"Don't worry," Ban muttered, as they drove towards the lights of Tokyo. "I intend to be."


	6. Chapter Six

The wind caught at Kazuki's hair and set the long wrapped tails of it curving out behind him as he came over the top of the building in a single sustained rush, threads already spinning out from his hands to catch at Kanou. The boy dodged, then saw Juubei coming in the direction which he had thought was free, and tried to abort his movement mid-swerve, bringing his fans round in an attempt to deflect Kazuki's strings.

As this was no more than Kazuki had expected, his koto strings wrapped themselves round the handles of Kanou's fans and ripped them from the boy's hands, sending them arcing out to either side like falling wings in the evening sun.

Kanou cried out in mingled shock and something akin to pain. "No -- no, you can't --"

Juubei's needles marked the space around Kanou's body, sending him backing up against the wall. A single needle cut into the cement an inch from his right eye, in clear message. _Look what I can do. It could have been your eye, if I'd wanted. It still could._

Kazuki spun the remaining loose string back into his bells, but kept one hand ready to bring it out again. He knew Kanou; the boy had a tendency to be cunning and devious, and even the smallest cornered rat had a nasty bite. "So," he said soothingly. They could begin without Toshiki -- he'd be with them in a moment, once he got back from guarding Kanou's other potential escape route.

The noises of Mugenjou drifted on the sunset air. Battles; brawls; arguments; somewhere, higher up, a woman singing.

"So nothing," Kanou said, folding his arms defiantly.

"I was under the impression that you wanted to talk to us." Kazuki kept his voice pleasant and gentle. "What would you like to discuss?"

Juubei weighed another needle in his hand, letting the light flicker along its steel length.

Kanou's eyes flicked to Juubei, then back to Kazuki again. He seemed to be waiting for something. When the silence grew too long, he set his chin mulishly. "I just . . . all right, I was rude. I'm . . . sorry. May I go now?"

"He was extremely rude," Juubei remarked to Kazuki, apparently ignoring Kanou completely.

Kazuki nodded judiciously. "But it has been a while since he was in Volts. Hasn't it, Kanou-kun?"

Kanou looked down at his folded arms. He muttered to his feet, "It's been a while since _anyone's_ been in Volts, hasn't it?"

There was little that Kazuki could say to that. And perhaps there was little point keeping the boy here like this, interrogating him. It wasn't as if he had the nerve to run anything major on his own, and . . .

. . . and where was Toshiki?

"Juubei," Kazuki said, and Kanou looked up at the sharpness of his tone, shoulders tightening against the wall. The flicker of fear in the boy's eyes confirmed Kazuki's suspicions. _If he hadn't been involved in something, he wouldn't be afraid now; but he isn't running it, therefore someone else is; and Toshiki still hasn't arrived . . ._ "Keep Kanou-kun here a moment. I want to see what's keeping Toshiki."

"As you order, Kazuki-sama," Juubei answered.

Kazuki leapt down from the top of the building from balcony to balcony, moving round to the route which Toshiki would have been following.

Toshiki's sash lay tangled in the empty street, amid the silence. There was nobody else there. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and Kazuki knew with a bone-deep chill that in Mugenjou nobody ever looked out to see what was going on, nobody _dared_ to look in case they might get involved, and nobody could tell him who had been there.

He walked around the scarf, lips drawn thin and tight as he surveyed the area. That mark in the road, there -- that would have been one of Toshiki's blows, it had the right impact pattern.

There were only thin spatters of blood. Nothing major. No serious wounds. He was grateful for that.

There was . . . he frowned. A late shaft of light made the side of the building almost sparkle for a moment. He licked a finger, and brushed it delicately against the wall, then raised it to his eyes. The same sparkle caught the glow of the sunset.

Glass. Diamond dust. That meant Kagami Kyouji.

That would explain the sash, perhaps -- Toshiki had known enough to try to shield his breathing.

But that didn't explain anything else.

He was in a cold fury as he returned to the rooftop, the sash knotted around his own waist like a promise. Juubei half turned his head at Kazuki's footsteps, but didn't shift his gaze from Kanou. Two new needles stood in the brickwork around the boy, just above his shoulders.

Kazuki was silent until he stood directly in front of Kanou. Even then, the boy wouldn't meet his gaze.

"Kazuki-sama . . ." Juubei began, then fell silent.

Kazuki reached forward and delicately took Kanou's chin in his hand, tilting the boy's head until he was obliged to look at Kazuki. "Kanou-kun," he said, each word deliberate and frozen as the anger burning in him, "you had better have some answers for me."

Kanou shivered. The pulse in his neck jumped, then settled at a new, higher rate. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said too quickly.

Kazuki felt his grip tighten slightly, as though it was someone else's hand on Kanou's face. "Kagami Kyouji. If it is him you are frightened of, Kanou-kun, then rest assured you have far more reason to be afraid of me."

Kanou's breath caught in his throat. He swallowed. "I don't know anything about it," he said, with a firmness that surprised Kazuki.

"Kazuki-sama, perhaps if I . . ." Juubei let the words trail off in such a way as to strain the nerves.

Kanou still didn't say anything.

With a snort, Kazuki released him, and trailed his fingers through the air as though it could wash away the touch of the boy's flesh. "It's Masaki."

"No!" Kanou cried out furiously. "It wasn't! I didn't say --"

"Of course you didn't," Kazuki cut in. "But there's nobody else that you would protect."

Patterns shifted as he considered them. Masaki and Kagami working together, with Kanou as the ignorant lure. Had it been Toshiki in particular they were after (and if so, why?) or had it been any of the three of them? There had been no trail left behind at the scene of the battle, but it was reasonable to suppose that Kagami would be returning to Babylon City.

With Toshiki.

He turned to Juubei. "We must make haste. If we are lucky, we may be able to intercept Kagami before he reaches the Beltline or crosses it."

"And . . ." Juubei jerked his head towards Kanou interrogatively.

"Well, we can hardly leave him here to run back to Babylon City." Kazuki considered the options. Carrying the boy with them would slow them down, but tying him and leaving him here would only be a temporary solution.

His phone rang.

"Excuse me," he said in automatic courtesy, and slipped it out of his pocket, flipping it open. "Hello?"

"Kazuki." It was Makubex's voice. "We are under attack, and I would be grateful for your help."

For a moment, Kazuki considered shaking the phone to see if that would correct its apparent malfunction. "You, _you_ are under attack, Makubex?"

"Yes." There was a faint backdrop of bangs and thuds and not-quite-distinguishable screaming to Makubex's words. "They're using black threads. Would you . . ."

Kazuki wanted to scream, _not now_ , but he knew that wasn't an option. There had to be something deliberate behind this. Timing like this couldn't possibly be random. But now he had to choose between saving Toshiki, or helping Makubex against the people who he had been hunting for since the death of his family, and it wasn't just Makubex, it would be Sakura and Emishi in the firing line as well, and everyone else down there, and . . . there was no damn choice at all. If it had just been news of the Black Thread Clan, he could have let that go by for a moment, for long enough to find Toshiki, but if it was all the others in the balance as well . . .

_Toshiki, forgive me. I swear that I will find you. I swear that if they have hurt you, there will be no hole so deep they can hide in it from my vengeance._

"I'm coming," he said firmly. "Can you hold your position?"

"A while," Makubex answered, and Kazuki could hear the relief in his friend's voice, however much the other was trying to hide it. "We're having some problems with the computer security."

Kazuki reckoned distances and times in his head. "We'll be there in half an hour," he said. "Forty minutes at the most. Hold on."

"We'll hold," Makubex answered.

Kazuki snapped the phone shut. "Juubei," he said flatly. "I will bind Kanou, you carry him. Makubex needs our help at once."

Juubei frowned, his heavy brows drawing together. "Kazuki-sama, what about Toshiki?"

"Toshiki will have to wait." Each word seemed stained with blood. "He knows we will come." _And we will_ , Kazuki vowed. _We will_.

* * *

Toshiki was aware of the voice before he was aware of the light, and he was aware of the pain in his arms and neck before he was aware of the voice. It was a low voice, a man's voice, one that he had heard before, and it was continuous, like a river over shale, pausing for a moment as though to wait for an answer, then replying to itself and going on again.

The light ran thin needles under his lids and pried at the back of his skull. Bands of pain ran round his wrists and forced tendrils down the muscles of his arms, leaking into his shoulders and neck, aching worse with every passing moment.

Toshiki opened his eyes and managed to stand upright, taking the stress off his arms. A room. A window giving onto a pale twilight sky. A man sitting near the door. Chains ran from the cuffs on his wrists to the wall above his head, tight enough that he couldn't pull away from the wall.

He wasn't entirely surprised.

The man sitting by the door broke off his private monologue and turned to look at him. The light from the neon strip in the ceiling caught on the backs of his gloves and the metal pin in his collar, glinted ferally on his single eye.

"You're awake," Fudou Takuma said.

This was not good.

"You are . . . Uryuu Toshiki." Fudou rolled the words in his mouth as he rose from his chair, toying with them as if they were alive and could squirm. "Yes. Uryuu Toshiki."

Toshiki repressed the urge to squirm back against the wall. Everyone knew that Fudou Takuma was obsessed. Obsession was nothing. He could handle the obsessed. They just needed to be persuaded into talking about whatever it was. It was Kazuki he was worried about. What had happened to his leader, with him not there? How could he have been so careless as to let Kagami take him down? "Yes," he said, and tried to keep his tone level. "I am Uryuu Toshiki. You are Fudou Takuma, aren't you?"

"Yes," the other man growled. He took a pace closer to Toshiki, and then another.

And this time Toshiki truly had to work to keep his body language calm and to stop himself tensing up in a useless readiness for battle, because the miasma of pure insanity that he could now see behind Fudou's single eye, read in every aspect of his movements, was something which chilled him. _Lucifer was obsessed but he was sane. This man isn't sane._

"I know about you." Another pace. Close enough that he was almost within arm's length. "You are the one who . . . Midou Ban brought back to life."

"Yes," Toshiki said, in calm agreement, trying to think if he could use this against Fudou. _Midou Ban, yes, that's the keynote of his obsession._ "Yes," he lied. "I remember that."

"I heard about it." A brief frown flickered across Fudou's face, but was gone again as quickly as a cloud before a storm. He stepped closer, and reached out with his right hand to touch the wall besides Toshiki's head, leaning his weight on it. "Tell me. Tell me what Midou Ban did to you."

"There was a ceremony," Toshiki answered. He knew that much. Kazuki and Juubei had been strangely reluctant to go into detail, and to be frank, he hadn't wanted to know much about it himself. "The blood of the Witch-Queen's descendant . . ."

"Yes." Fudou brought his left hand up to touch the side of Toshiki's neck, and Toshiki could feel the metal through the thin fabric of the man's glove. "The blood of the Witch-Queen's descendant, given to you . . ." There was a glazed madness in his face. "Midou Ban touched this skin . . ." His hand moved upwards, across Toshiki's face.

"Let go of me," Toshiki said, trying to keep his voice level. _Don't struggle. It'll excite him. Struggling is prey behaviour. Don't struggle, stay calm._ He could feel the hardness of the wall through his hair as he tried to force his head backwards.

"Midou Ban kissed these lips," Fudou whispered, making the words intimate, as he pressed the tips of his fingers against Toshiki's mouth.

Toshiki could feel the edge of metal through the cloth, almost enough to cut through it and into his flesh.

Fudou shifted his weight, leaning against Toshiki, fingers tracing from his lips down to the side of Toshiki's neck again. "Blood," he murmured, and this time Toshiki could see the arousal as well as the madness, and conscious thought deserted him, and he tried to squirm free or to bring his legs up and kick out, but the chains on his wrists were too firm, and the other man's body too heavy and too strong. "This blood . . ."

"Fudou-san, stop," a girl's voice said.

Slowly the sanity returned to Fudou's eye. His breathing slowed. He leaned away from Toshiki again, brushing one finger against Toshiki's neck like a promise, and took a step back, turning to face the door.

A little girl in a frilly dress stood there, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, clasping a white rabbit doll against her. "Fudou-san," she said, voice gentle but strangely adult, "we need him alive, remember. Don't worry, Fudou-san. We've promised you Midou Ban. You will have him and you can do whatever you want to with him."


	7. Chapter Seven

"Put this on." Ban passed Ginji the anorak and balaclava.

"I'm not sure," Ginji protested, dangling the clothing between his fingers like a particularly repellent wet newspaper. "Don't you think it'll attract even more attention than it would for us to be just going in there?"

"We've already been through this," Himiko snapped, doing up the zip on her own anorak in a single angry movement. "The moment we take a single step in there with you recognisable, they're all going to start screaming Raitei Amano Ginji, Raitei Amano Ginji. Just like last time." She picked up the remaining balaclava on the table. "I don't know about you, but I don't think that makes for a quiet retrieval mission."

"The brat's got it," Ban said, snatching the balaclava from her fingers and forcing it down over her head. Muffled noises came from behind the wool. "And if Miroku Natsuhiko hears _she's_ coming, that blows our mission too. And the same for me."

"But, Ban-chan," Ginji protested, "you may be wearing a balaclava, but you're still wearing your glasses."

Ban adjusted his purple shades with one finger. It made it clear that the question of his removing them was not open to discussion.

"And Akabane-san . . ."

"Yes, Ginji-kun?" Akabane queried politely as Ginji trailed off.

"Never mind," Ginji muttered, and pulled the balaclava on over his blond hair.

Mr No-Brake had dropped them off near the entrance to Mugenjou which would take them closest to the West Block and the Spice Market. Ban had been the one to suggest disguises, and Himiko had agreed. Ginji had let himself be persuaded, though frankly he thought it was all a bit pointless; Makubex would spot them coming in, however much they tried to disguise themselves.

He tried to remember Ren from the days of VOLTS. Surely she'd been there then? But no face answered his thoughts, no child's voice sounded in his memory.

Perhaps she'd just never been in the inner circle. Raitei had been aloof, had kept to himself and to his Kings and lieutenants.

But that was Raitei, and this was now.

* * *

Inside Mugenjou it was the same as it always was, buzzing like a live wire, with neon lights burning in the ceiling and streaks of lamplight and candlelight cutting through the chinks in shuttered and curtained windows, fragmentary against the darkness of the Tokyo night. People were out and about, doing business or scrounging for trash that could be somehow reused.

Ginji led the way, then Ban, then Himiko, and Akabane a few paces behind all of them, pace silent, the skirts of his drifting coat making his shadow shift and flux against the walls. People glanced at them and then looked away again. It was common in Mugenjou for people to go masked or hide their identity. Sensible inhabitants took the hint and didn't ask.

And as for Doctor Jackal, well . . . what sane person would want to try to question him?

He could feel the familiar pulse of Mugenjou in his blood and sinews, but he did his best to ignore it and let it recede into the background. So far nobody seemed to have recognised him. That was good. The disguise was working. It wasn't just the lack of people running around attempting to greet (or kill) him, but nobody was taking meaningful looks at them and then sliding off into the shadows with intent to inform, either. He knew how to spot that.

"How much further?" Ban hissed from a foot behind him.

"Just round the corner," Ginji turned and waited for the others to catch up. "Himiko-chan, the Spice Market's just round the corner here . . ."

Himiko nodded, and rubbed at her nose with the back of one hand. She looked much younger and more vulnerable with her hair covered and in the heavy anorak. "I can already smell some of it. How big is the place?"

Ginji tried to remember. It had always been Kazuki who visited most frequently; the place was one of the classier parts of Mugenjou, and there had been exotic, beautiful wares on sale, things which had drawn Kazuki like the echoes of his own family and its distant elegance. "About . . . um, a couple of sports fields? There are lots of stalls, and some rooms built off it that people use as stores for the bigger things like rugs and furniture. It got called the Spice Market because that was how it started out, but it's expanded since then. I think the actual spices are in the north part. But . . ." He hesitated. "There's this woman in the south-east corner, or at least she used to be, and she always knew what was going on. If you-know-who was here, she might have heard about him."

Ban shoved his hands into his pockets. "I don't like splitting up, but if the place isn't too big, then if one of our groups runs into trouble or spots him, the other one should be able to hear that something's going on. Right, Jackal?"

"Indeed," Akabane murmured. "Assuming that matters last so long as to require the second group to interfere."

Ban nodded curtly. "Okay. Ginji and I will hit this old lady up for some info. You and Lady Poison there can - go sniffing around, right?"

Himiko's mouth pursed as though she'd bitten into something sour, but she returned the nod. "Right. Call us if you need any help, Ban."

Ban snorted, turned away, and dragged Ginji several paces before pausing to ask where they should be going.

* * *

Himiko found herself liking the place more than she'd thought she would. It was - interesting. Yes, that was a good word for it. Interesting. Yamato had taken her to places like this sometimes, when he'd been making deals, when she and he and Ban had been working together, but Lady Poison only rarely visited markets, and then it was just to find the ingredients she needed for some of her rarer perfumes. Consciously virtuous that she was playing the part of a casual shopper, she wandered along a set of stalls and peered at the plastic-wrapped dolls for sale. Some of them were already customised, with locks of hair, pins, salt, and small pouches of graveyard dust, while others proudly proclaimed themselves as **CURSE-YOUR-OWN-ENEMY**.

Akabane paced down the row parallel to hers, a drifting shadow on the edge of her vision. She wondered what he was looking at. Knives, perhaps?

She turned a corner and reached the herbs and spices. Oh, now this was _important_ , surely Ban and Ginji couldn't begrudge her a few purchases, and why on earth had Ginji never told her about this place before? They had John-the-Conqueror root, marked pure, snakeshead root, and that was just at the first glance. This demanded investigation. Surely a casual shopper would shop? She leaned on the edge of the stall and began to dicker with the man sitting in the shadows of a rumpled awning, his bone earrings swinging wide and white as he rose to argue the herb's quality, and -

Something white moved in the corner of her eye. A long white coat. Shoulder-caped. She'd seen that before.

She turned to get a reflected view in the burnished brass pot to one side. No. It wasn't him. This was a younger man, almost a boy, no older than Ginji. His large spectacles gave him an ingenous, charming air, and though he moved with the smooth assured grace of a martial artist, though he had a bag strapped across his back much as Miroku Natsuhiko had done, it wasn't the same man.

_There are seven of them,_ Akabane had said.

"Yes," she finished, "that'll do."

"We take Visa," the stallkeeper suggested hopefully.

Himiko slapped down a wad of notes on the plank in front of her. "And you take a discount for cash, right?"

"That too," he agreed.

She watched the white-coated boy in the brass reflection as he picked his way through the crowd. Nobody tried to pick his pockets or molest him, which in itself said something about him. He didn't seem to have noticed her. He was heading towards a cluster of stalls holding books.

Akabane cut through the crowd towards him like a spearhead, people backing away from him as he came, no blades drawn yet but every movement precise and smooth. Not an attack, not quite yet, but the threat of edges glinted in his dark eyes and swept behind him in the shadows of his coat.

The Miroku blinked, turned, and ran.

Himiko was torn between wanting to shout at Akabane for alerting their quarry (though really, he couldn't have hidden for long) and not wanting to waste the time. She grabbed her purchases and stuffed them into her pockets as she ran to cut the Miroku off before he could reach the corridor over to the left. Unfortunately, the crowd didn't give her the respect or the sheer paralysing blind fear that Akabane commanded. Vaulting over a crockery stall and sliding between two rails of wedding kimonos, she came out skidding between crane-embroidered sleeves and managed three steps in open space before she had to take to the partitions between stalls for want of a better path, hearing the wood cracking behind her as she ran. Shouts and yells came from behind her as she sprinted after the Miroku and Akabane, but both of them were moving faster than she was and she didn't have the time to pause and use Acceleration Scent, she could only work on following and not losing them, oops, well he shouldn't have stacked glassware there and she was going to come back and she might even make an anonymous donation to that stall if they were polite to her next time, down now and between a pair of large men with very large hands who seemed to think she was avoiding paying for something, after the white coat and the black coat, and someone shouting behind her, was that Ban, well, he should have been paying attention, she couldn't stop now . . .

She followed Akabane into the mouth of the tunnel, and her slim form was lost in its darkness.

* * *

Ban chewed on the butt of his cigarette and tried to work out what it was that was worrying him. There was something niggling at the back of his mind, something which he hadn't thought through properly or had ignored, and he couldn't see what it was. He squinted at nothing in particular through his glasses. It wasn't just Mugenjou, or Ginji, or Himiko, or even Jackal, but . . . something else. There was something he was missing, and possibly it was just simply too _big_ for him to see, a deception so huge that he couldn't see its edges and didn't recognise it.

Ginji was being Ginji. There was no other way to put it. He'd thrown back his hood and slipped off his balaclava the moment they'd got into this small space, delineated from the rest of the market by heavy drapes and thick enough with incense to cure a dozen kippers. And now he was sitting there nattering away with the old hag who owned the place and who had so far _three_ times attempted to pinch Ban's ass.

Not that his ass was a bad ass. He could understand that it drew women like a herring drew flies. He was comfortably conscious of the tight embrace of denim, the cool suavity of muscle.

But dammit, he already had enough old hags in his life without getting another.

"Why yes," the old hag in question said brightly, "there is a man staying near here who's just the way you describe. My great-grand-son's nephew's cousin's friend - her name's Ludmilla and she's such a sweet girl - she said she saw someone like that buying everything he'd need for a nice nourishing meal yesterday, and then around here a few hours ago. And speaking of meals, you're far too thin, Raitei-kun." Somehow she managed to make _Raitei_ sound as if it should always have a _-kun_ attached to the end. "Eat, eat, I tell you, but do you ever listen to me? You're a lovely boy, but you need a wife to take you in hand . . ."

Ginji ducked his head and blushed. There were screams and crashes outside.

With an absolute certainty born of bitter experience, Ban threw back the drapes to look out and see exactly what the hell the brat and the Jackal were up to now. He caught sight of a long white coat and a familiar pair of glasses heading towards the corridor in the far wall, a dark hat and coat speeding after them, and a smaller figure going hell-for-leather over the tops of stalls and merchants in order to catch up with the pair of them. "Come on!" he yelled to Ginji. "He's getting away!"

"I'm terribly sorry," Ginji said earnestly to the old woman, "but . . ."

Ban grabbed Ginji's shoulder and dragged him along. _Dodge or bulldoze?_ The two of them went directly through a dried fish stall to get onto one of the major passageways, ignoring the shrieks and scattered whitebait, and cut across towards the flicker of passing trenchcoats.

"Which way?" Ban called to Ginji as they separated for a moment to curve around the sides of a kitchen implements stall. He casually picked up a set of bamboo steamers as he passed, and tossed them into a thug with the unmistakeable look of security who seemed to want them to stop and explain.

"It goes north," Ginji shouted back, sidestepping to avoid an awestruck group of children who were pointing and gasping, "Surely that isn't . . ."

"It isn't," Ban snapped at them as he tried to catch up with their quarry. _Shit. Didn't think Miroku Natsuhiko was that fast. Or Jackal, or the brat._ "Where from there?" he demanded, ducking under a teetering grill which was temptingly loaded with yakitori and reminded him that they hadn't eaten yet.

"Just - residential - rooms, flats -" Ginji gasped, as the two of them came out into a blessedly open space.

The corridor was a direct run ahead of them. Himiko vanished into it, following the two men ahead of her.

_We'll be caught up with them in a moment,_ Ban thought, and followed, Ginji behind him.

* * *

The Honky-Tonk was still open, but it was quiet now. The customers had all gone home, ready for a quiet night's rest. Paul sat behind the bar, laptop open in front of him, and contemplated the computer disk in his hand. He'd sent Natsumi and Rena out to the convenience store to buy some food, _just in case the boys should come back and want a snack,_ he'd told them, but more to keep them busy and occupied. To give him time to think.

The bell on the door tinkled, and Hevn stepped inside. Her long skirt swayed around her ankles and flirted with the shadows, and her hair fell from where her headscarf held it in a long flow of golden silk down her back. Her eyes were the same gold, cool and clear.

"Any news?" Paul asked.

Hevn shook her head. "Nothing. The last I heard was when they went out after the Transporters." She shrugged. "And there isn't anything I can do now."

Paul nodded. "A drink?"

"Please." Her hips swung sweetly as she walked across to perch on a barstool, her heels tapping with each pace. Paul had seen her walk often enough now to be used to it - immunised, even - but it was still a lovely thing to watch. Her skin was like heavy cream, flawless and beautiful.

He turned his attention to the bottles, and poured her a gin and tonic.

"What's this?" She tapped one nail against the laptop screen. "Still researching?"

"Checking something." He set the glass down next to her. "And you? Did you just drop by for company?"

She pondered, then took a sip of her gin and tonic, and smiled. "Tying up loose ends, really. You know how it is. You plan everything to the last inch, you go through every single loose end, but there's always a random factor somewhere."

Paul laughed. "Like Ginji."

Hevn nodded, and her golden hair swayed behind her like flames. "Like Ginji."

"Well." He shrugged, and slipped the computer disk back into a drawer, conscious of her eyes on him. "So you've been through all your loose ends on this one, then?"

Hevn nodded again. She rose from her stool, shoulders pale under the bar's harsh light. "Just like you. You look tired, Paul."

Paul frowned and turned to look at himself in the glass of the window, moved by a quick twinge of vanity. "Do I?"

"Afraid so. And people talk about _me_ worrying about the boys." She laughed briefly. "You sit down and let me mix you something for once. Master."

"Well . . ." At least it took her attention away from the computer and the disk. He didn't trust anyone enough to share that with them - not even Natsumi, not even the GetBackers. "Sure," he said, and let her cross behind him to the ranks of bottles that hung behind the bar. A drink would do him good.


	8. Chapter Eight

Toshiki hung in his chains, and tried to be grateful that the blonde girl with the doll had taken Fudo Takuma away with her when she left. There was something fundamentally unsettling about her - an aura of expertise and age, totally at odds with the brightness of her hair, the pallor of her skin, the sheer childishness of her face. The way that Fudo had obeyed her made it even worse. What were they to each other?

She couldn't be his _daughter_ , could she? No. Absolutely not. The very thought made his face twitch.

Darkness had fallen outside. He looked out at a cloudy sky, and found himself wishing for lightning. He almost missed the tiny click from the door.

It opened a tiny half-inch - the typical mistake, he thought, of someone who wasn't used to spying or infiltration. He didn't speak, though, but waited, hoping beyond hope that this might be Kazuki or even Juubei or . . .

The door swung open more fully, and a teenager slipped into the room. It took him a shameful half-second before he recognised her as Ren, as the person they'd been looking for. He opened his mouth, but kept silent when she put a desperate finger to her mouth, and was quiet while she went up on tiptoes to work at the cuffs on his wrists with a set of lockpicks. _Looks as if some of those rumours about the work she used to do for Gen might be true after all. Though in that case, she should have known better than to do that with the door. Odd._

When his wrists were free, he couldn't help letting out a tiny breath of relief. He lowered his arms to rub at the numb flesh, and tilted his head in question. _What now?_ he tried to convey.

Ren nodded, as though understanding. She beckoned him towards the door, then added an emphatic _Me first_ and what he thought was a fairly obvious _quietly!_

He nodded in response.

The corridor outside was surprisingly normal, and he found himself oddly disappointed. Things should have been stranger. Ren led him down two more bland corridors, and into a cleaning closet, before closing the door behind the two of them. It was confined and dark. It was still better than being chained up and pawed by a psychopath.

In the darkness she took a long, shaking breath.

Instinct took over, and he reached out to put an arm round her shoulders, to hold her the way he'd have held any younger friend who had been alone and in danger and afraid, and who needed a moment to know that they were protected. "It's all right," he whispered. "They can't hear us here, Ren-kun?"

"No." Her voice shook. She said it again, more firmly. "No. I don't think they bother - bother putting mikes in the cleaning closets. That'd be just stupid."

"It would," Toshiki agreed. He wasn't quite sure about that himself, but if they were so paranoid that they'd bug the cleaning closets, then they'd already noticed the escape, and it was only a matter of time in any case. "Ren - what happened?"

"He killed Grandfather." Ren's voice was shaking again, and her arms locked around Toshiki's waist desperately tight. She was so small and thin under her bulky jacket and her proud attitude, still so much a child who had to grow up. "They told me."

"He did." There was no point lying to her.

She took another gulping breath, then fought herself to stillness. "He. Yes. I knew. He wouldn't have let me go, otherwise, he - yes." Another breath. "We have to get out of here."

"Where are we?" Toshiki asked.

"Babylon City."

He couldn't stop the muffled obscenity that came to his lips. Even with Kagami Kyouji involved, he'd thought no, be honest, had _hoped_ that he hadn't ended up here, in this place that even Kazuki feared.

"Yes," Ren said, bitterly, and he remembered that she'd run with the Volts when she was younger, had learned all Mugenjou's bitter lessons about life and shit and the way that the two went together. "They're doing some sort of experiment. We're going to be used for it. We've got to get out of here."

The getting out of there, Toshiki decided, went without saying. "What sort of experiment?" he asked. Lucifer hovered at the back of his mind, a shadow on his past. But Ren had never been involved in that, so why her?

"It's something they've been planning for a long time." Her voice shook. "They were talking about original candidates and replacements and about the Children. And they want some more people for it too, and they're bringing them in now. I only heard a bit of it, I had to run for it before they caught me listening." She pulled herself together with a shudder that he could feel against his body in their cramped quarters. "Toshiki-san, it's not just that we have to get out of here because they're crazy and they're going to kill us. We've got to get out of here because we _can't_ let this happen."

"Yes. We have to get out of here." He kept his voice calm and soothing. "It'll be easier now we're working together."

"And Toshiki-san, this isn't the first time. They did something like this twenty-five years ago. Only something went wrong. They said something about calling crossroads, or something like that - it was in a language I didn't understand - but it went wrong and they had to get ready to try it again differently. And now they're ready. Now they're going to finish it."

* * *

Himiko caught up with Akabane at a curve in the corridor. He'd stopped. Coming level with him and looking down where the corridor bent, she realised why. There was no sign of the Miroku. None at all.

Akabane adjusted his hat. "I believe, Lady Poison," he said, calmly and mildly, "that someone is playing games with us."

Himiko didn't have to look at his face. She knew that his mouth would have that mildly pleasant _hungry_ curve which suggested he would be delighted to make the game more interesting for the other player. Instead, she pulled off the balaclava and tucked it in one pocket, then unzipped the parka. There was no point in encumbering herself now. "He couldn't have been that fast," she said flatly.

"No," Akabane agreed. "It would have been impossible."

"Which means that we're in the middle of Mugenjou and someone's playing virtual reality again."

"Exactly." Akabane gave her what might almost have been an approving nod. "Did you have the chance to use your Follow Scent, Lady Poison?"

Himiko shook her head. "No. Going too fast. I thought I heard Ban and Ginji behind me, but . . . " She turned to gesture at the empty corridor. "I think they've been diverted. Just like us."

"Hm. Well, then . . ." He shrugged. "We will simply have to see which of us reaches the end first, won't we?"

Himiko looked at him and frowned. "Doctor Jackal . . ."

"Yes, Lady Poison?" he inquired, all courtesy.

She remembered his face earlier, his sudden interest at the news of Gen's death, his unexpected willingness to listen and investigate. Pieces of jigsaw fell together in her mind. "While I am glad you feel that I am capable of looking after myself while walking into a trap," she said, taking care not to let her body language stray towards aggression, not to let her fingers twitch towards her vials of perfume in a move that he might interpret as hostility, "just how long have you realised that we were being led here deliberately?"

Akabane weighed his answer thoughtfully, pausing before replying. "I believe it was when they took such care to make sure that you would notice the scents to be able to identify the location. Seeing Miroku Yukihiko there merely confirmed it."

She could have said something rude. It wouldn't have been worth it. It wouldn't have made a single moment's difference. She knew who he was, what he was, and she had always lived with it; with him sitting next to her in the lorry, guarding her back on assignments, both of them professionals. Professionals. Finally, all that she said was, "You could have told me."

His mouth curved in a smile. "Perhaps they might have been listening."

_You wanted a fight._ "Perhaps they might," she agreed.

"And, in any case . . ." He shrugged. "If we had not come to this bait, they would have used another one. Better to spring the trap knowingly."

"Into the spider's web?" Himiko asked.

"Under the scorpion's sting," Akabane agreed. He gestured towards the corridor ahead. "Shall we?"

* * *

Natsumi tried the door handle of the Honky-Tonk. It was locked. With an annoyed little hiss, she balanced her bags of food in the curve of her left arm, pulled the key from her purse, murmured an apology to Rena standing behind her, and opened the door.

The Master was lying on the floor, one arm outspread, face down. That was the first thing she noticed. The other bits of it - Hevn kneeling beside him, the smell of alcohol harsh on the air, the wet floor, the bags of food spilling from her hands, the single bottle and glass still standing upright on the bar, other bottles scattered and smashed around the room - all those were just window-dressing, props on the set and unimportant next to the main character. With a little gasp, she ran across to where the Master was lying and fell on her knees next to him. "Master! Master! Hevn-san, is he all right?"

"I'm not sure," Hevn said, her voice calm and reassuring. "I think it's a fit of some sort. Have you any medical training, Natsumi-chan?"

"Of course," Natsumi said quickly. She'd taken first aid courses not long after starting to work at the Honky-Tonk. In the background, in the waitress-sense that she'd developed to be conscious of all the customers in the room, she was vaguely aware of Rena walking around to the bar, heard the thud as she put her bags down on it. "What do you want me to do?"

"I need you to put your hands here, and here." Hevn guided Natsumi's hands into two careful positions on Paul's back. "Just hold them there, and stay there a moment . . ." She rose. "And . . ."

"And don't move." Rena's voice was abruptly cold, and it had a tone that Natsumi had never heard before, a kind of distance and dispassion that was foreign to the girl she'd come to know as a friend. "Stand very carefully, Hevn-san, and keep your hands where I can see them."

Natsumi looked up, and saw in a sort of shock that went beyond normal horror and all the way into outright terror that Rena had taken out the gun which the Master kept behind the bar, and was pointing it at Hevn.

"Rena-chan." Hevn spread her hands carefully. Her skirt and hair swayed like a flame. "What's the matter?"

"Maybe you're possessed." Rena held the gun steady, as though she knew how to use such things. "It's not as if that sort of thing can't happen. But you don't look any different from normal. Take a step away from the Master and Natsumi, please."

Hevn took one careful pace away. She didn't look down at Natsumi.

Natsumi kept her hands where Hevn had put them, but something was nagging at the back of her mind. Something had been wrong when they came in, and was it Hevn, or was it the Master, or was it the room itself, and had Rena gone insane, to be doing this . . .

"Thank you," Rena said, the formality of the phrase out of place in the alcohol-stinking bar. "Natsumi-sempai. Is the Master breathing?"

"Don't move your hands!" Hevn hissed. "It could kill him!"

"Liar." The click of the gun's catch was loud in the sudden quiet.

"Rena," Natsumi said timidly, "why are you saying that Hevn-san is a liar?"

"It must be Lucifer again," Hevn said, her voice still calm, as though the gun pointed at her was simply a telephone and she was arranging a deal.

Rena shook her head, once. "He's dead."

"But " Natsumi began.

"He's dead!" Rena snapped. "I know! I'd know if he's still alive! And he's dead!"

Hevn took half a pace towards her, but the younger woman centered the gun on her again.

Natsumi took a deep breath. "Rena-chan. Assuming that Hevn-san is possessed or somehow controlled, how do you know it?" She couldn't bring herself to look down at the Master, though she could feel his pulse through the thin cotton of his shirt against her hands.

Rena swallowed. "Natsumi-sempai . . . I haven't always done nice things. I am not a nice person like you. But I do know what a room looks like when someone's set it up to torch it."

Something flickered in Hevn's eyes.

Rena kept the gun steady, one hand supporting the other wrist. "And I know that if someone gets drunk or has a fit and smashes anything that he can hit, he does _not_ leave the bottle and glass in front of him sitting there on the table untouched."

That had been it. That had been the thing that was wrong. Hevn-san was somehow being controlled, that had to be it. Decisively Natsumi took her hands away from Paul's back. "I'll phone for help . . ."

The door opened, and Shido stood there, nostrils wrinkling at the smell, face bemused. "I - what?"

Without a second's pause, Hevn screamed, "Shido, look out!" and launched herself at Natsumi, throwing her to the ground and rolling on top of her, between her and Rena.

Natsumi hit the ground hard, taken by surprise, and felt the cold wetness of alcohol-slick tiling soaking through the thin fabric of her blouse and skirt as Hevn rolled on top of her, and she would have tried to call out to Shido, but the older woman had planted her elbow firmly in Natsumi's stomach, and all she could do for that moment was try to breathe, try very _hard_ to breathe, to ignore the thud as her head hit the floor, _and it would look as if she was trying to get me out of the line of fire,_ and the air was too thick for her to breathe and down on the floor it stank of alcohol and all she could hear for a moment, carrying above the crashing and thuds, was Rena's voice as she said _set it up to torch it_ and she was lying on the floor gasping and Hevn wasn't there any more and Shido was saying, "Natsumi? Are you all right? Where's Hevn?"

She pulled herself up on one elbow, still struggling to breathe. "Shido - Shido-san, it's not Rena's fault -something's wrong with Hevn - the Master's unconscious . . ."

There was a thud as the door was kicked open again, and a tinkle as a small piece of bright metal went spinning across the floor, reflecting in blue and silver.

It was a lit cigarette lighter.

Natsumi struggled to find the breath to scream as fire ballooned outwards.


	9. Chapter Nine

_Fire._ It was a reflex in any wild animal – fear the Red Flower, run from the forest blaze. It was embedded in their reflexes, a permanent fear at the back of their minds.

But just as Shido knew himself to be more than human, so he also knew himself to be more than animal.

"Hundred Animal Forms – Steppe Eagle!" Shido roared, his voice like thunder over the rising crackle of flames, and he ripped his shirt from his body, throwing it in front of him in a billow of cloth as he dived across the floor. He swept up the lighter and the beginnings of flame in the speed of his rush, in front of Natsumi's startled doe-eyes, and flung them together through the glass of the window in a crash of sound and light.

Beyond the shattered window, there was the sound of a car vanishing in the distance, the stench of the car's engine perceptible even above the stink of alcohol.

"She -- she -- " Rena was gasping where he had deposited her in the corner, safely away from that gun she'd been waving around.

Natsumi didn't try to say anything, but concentrated her attention on Paul, who lay on the floor like a wounded lion.

"What's going on?" Shido demanded of Rena. He'd never got to know the girl well. He was aware that she'd been involved in that business with the cards, and that she'd been used just as much as Toshiki had by the man who'd been behind it all. If Natsumi had the eyes and grace of a doe, this girl had the sharpness of a trained hound, but one that had been beaten by its master and knew how to bare its throat in submission.

Rena shook her head numbly, but he could see the sense coming back to her eyes. "The negotiator woman attacked the Master," she said flatly. "I don't know why. We came in here to find him unconscious and the place soaked in alcohol, Shido-san. I -- I got the gun that the Master keeps behind the bar and I was telling her not to do anything and then you came in."

"That's right," Natsumi corroborated from next to Paul. "Shido-san, can you come and look at the Master, please? You know more about first aid than we do."

Shido walked across and went carefully down on his knees, the air cold on his bare torso, checking Paul's pulse and breathing. He could feel the beginnings of pain and slackness in his own chest and arms, the payment for his own quick actions of a minute ago. He still wasn't fully recovered from that business with Kabuto and the Maryudo.

Neither was Madoka. But she, at least, could be kept out of this.

"Regular pulse," he said, finishing his checks. "Something on his breath. I think he was drugged." A pity Juubei wasn't here with his needles. "Natsumi, fetch me a bucket."

The girl scurried to obey, then stood well back. Clearly the months of working in a bar had taught her important lessons about bodily functions.

Shido hoisted Paul to his knees, opened the man's mouth, and induced vomiting. It was at least a more natural smell than the alcohol or petrol fumes. When the older man had cleared his stomach, he propped him up in a chair to recover.

Natsumi and Rena were wandering round the room with mops and buckets and brooms, clearing away the scattered glass and doing their best to wash away the alcohol. Shido decided it wouldn't help if he pointed out they'd need an industrial-level cleaner to really get the place clean. He pulled out the phone Madoka had given him, and tried dialling Ginji's number.

Engaged signal.

He frowned. Tried Kazuki's. Engaged, again. And Makubex. And even the snake bastard. "What the hell is going on?" he asked the room in general.

Paul coughed, spat into the bucket which Shido had thoughtfully left next to him, coughed again. "Shido-san. Can you check in the drawer under the till, please? There may be a computer disk there."

Shido strode across and tugged on the handle. The drawer slid open easily. "Only papers," he reported, after checking. "No disk."

Paul sighed. "She took it, then."

Natsumi gasped, her hand going to her mouth. "Master! Was that the disk which Teshimine-san left with you when he visited the last time that the GetBackers went into Mugenjou?"

It was impossible to see Paul's eyes behind his glasses, but the look which he shot at Natsumi had an annoyed air to it. "Just so."

Shido frowned. "What was on it?"

Paul shrugged. "A text file. I don't know. I only read the first part." He snorted at the look all three of them gave him. "There was a warning. It said that I might need at some point to be able to say truthfully that I'd never read the rest of the file."

Rena drew her breath in sharply. "Blackmail information, Master?"

"Old Gen was a computer expert," Shido said slowly. "And he dies, and now someone forces Hevn to try to steal this information from you . . . there has to be a connection."

"Right," Paul agreed. "So check the drawer two to the right, and look behind the false back at the end."

There was a silence in the room.

Paul smiled. "Just because I didn't read it doesn't mean that I couldn't make a copy of it. Just in case."

* * *

Ban flared his nostrils and sniffed hopefully.

Ginji sighed. "It's a pity we didn't get some food at the market, Ban-chan."

Ban shook his head. "No, not that. I can't even smell Himiko's Tracking Scent. No such luck." He looked around the bare corridor disconsolately. "I suppose it would just have made life too easy."

"But shouldn't we have caught up with them by now anyhow?" Ginji pointed out.

Ban sighed. "We should." He looked around. Plain corridors, plain doors, a patina of grime, a shading of despair. The faint hum of machinery somewhere in the distance. Mugenjou, half real, half virtual, and no way of knowing which.

He hated the damn place.

"Ban-chan, I'm worried," Ginji said, echoing Ban's own thoughts. "This isn't going the way it should. We'd actually got on the track of whoever it was behind this, but look at things now. We're separated from Himiko-chan and Akabane-san, and I don't like being lost in Mugenjou like this . . ." His voice trailed off. "We could phone Makubex again?" he suggested hopefully.

Several pieces came together in Ban's head, and he swore violently.

Ginji looked horrified. "He's not that bad, Ban-chan!"

"It's not that." Ban kicked the wall, hard, and sent a chunk of plaster rattling down the hall ahead of them. "We've been used, Ginji. We've been fucking led by our noses all the damn way."

"What do you mean?"

Ban turned to look back down the corridor behind them. It vanished into darkness. "Look, Ginji. Normally, if someone said to me or you, "Do you want to go to Mugenjou again and wander round it on your own and get lost in the middle of it?" we'd not only say, "No," we'd say, "Fuck no." But look where we are now. Lost in the middle of Mugenjou."

Ginji shook his head. "Yes, but, Ban-chan . . . it's not as if all this could have been predicted. Nobody could have expected that we'd get Akabane-san and Himiko-chan to talk to us and give us all that information . . ."

"Oh yes they could," Ban said gloomily. "These days, they could."

"Or that we'd manage to work out that the Miroku were down by the market here –"

"Yes they could," Ban said again. "You think it's coincidence that he just _happened_ to smell of something which could let Himiko and you track him and bring us right to here?"

"Or that Makubex or one of the others wouldn't get in contact with us to tell us something was wrong?" Ginji persisted. "If this was being done by someone in Mugenjou, Makubex would know about it!" Then he hesitated. "Or is that part of the problem?"

Ban cast a meaningful eye at the ceiling. "Babylon City, Ginji. Brain Trust. Next thing you know, we'll have the bar host hanging round and -- whatever."

"You know," Ginji said, following Ban's train of thought remarkably well, "I think that guy _deserves_ someone like Akabane-san fighting him, if he tries to mess with Himiko-chan."

"Yeah," Ban agreed, feeling cheered. "Me too." He set off down the corridor again. "C'mon. Let's see if we can get somewhere they don't expect us to go."

* * *

"Have they passed that corner?" Emishi whispered.

The sound of laser fire and shrieks filled the air.

"I think so," Sakura said, and wound a strip torn from her skirt around her left forearm. It wasn't a serious cut, but they both already had too many minor wounds. Threads could slice; threads could gash; threads could, in combination and in elegant patterns, bleed them to death.

"At least Makubex has still got those ones working," Emishi commented, resisting the urge to run across, go on his knees beside her, and assure her that her pearl-like skin was still beautiful to his eyes, that the Black Thread users were unfeeling scum to have damaged it, and that he was personally going to go and wipe them out for their crimes against beauty, humanity, and Mugenjou. On the one hand, Sakura might laugh; on the other hand, he might lose.

This would have been so much easier if Shido were here, or if Kazuki and his muscular minions were still around; even more so if Makubex's computer-operated defenses had been working reliably. Which was probably the point. There was something unfair about launching an attack when all the usual defenders were away. It was like having an elderly aunt come round early on Sunday morning to check that you'd cleaned the kitchen and finding it stacked high with sushi trays and sake bottles from the previous evening's party while you were still snoring in the bathtub and hadn't even taken your boots off. You didn't have a chance.

"No word from Kazuki-sama," Sakura said quietly. "We may have to assume that he will not reach here before they breach the main portals to the computer centre."

Emishi bit his lip and tasted blood. "We can hold them," he said firmly. "The virtuals took down three of them, didn't they? And we got at least two more earlier. And it sounds as if the lasers got another one or two then. That leaves five. Six at most. We'll roll them up and put them on the shelf." He paused, hoping for a laugh.

Sakura sighed. "We have to plan for the worst, Emishi. If they reach here and break the doors, Makubex _must_ escape. While he is free, he can keep on working to get back control of the computer system. If they capture him, then we have much less chance of victory."

Emishi patted her arm. In Juubei's absence, this was safe and wouldn't result in compound fractures for him. "Sakura, honey, if they capture him, then victory won't be a concern for us, because they'll have done it over our dead bodies."

Her lips twitched. "That is true."

There was a crash and a cry of victory from round the bend of the corridor.

"I'll go and check," Emishi said, and he was on his feet and moving before Sakura could answer him. "You hold the fort." For he knew exactly what he had to do now. It was beautifully simple, like all the best tragedies were at root, and he wasn't going to give her the chance to get there first and tell _him_ to go back and save Makubex.

He heard her saying, "Emishi, no!" as he turned the corner.

It was a wide intersection with several corridors leading to it. Makubex's lasers made it a beautiful killing field to lure opponents into, to say nothing of the "shooting gallery" effect you could get by luring them after you down the corridors. While Emishi preferred a proper fight, one against one (or one against several, if the one was him), he didn't deny strategy. Sometimes strategy trumped proper behaviour.

Six of them were still standing. Four men, two woman. Damn. And one of the ones still standing was the one who was the leader. Double damn.

"I am prepared to accept your surrender," he announced grandly.

The leader -- Saizou, that was his name -- fondled a length of black thread meaningfully. He laughed. His minions joined in. He stopped. They stopped too. He was a slender young man, dark-eyed and dark-haired, his leather jacket and trousers clinging tightly to his body, black threads wound around his neck and wrists like tattoos. "Foolish whipmaster. You almost tempt me to keep you as a personal servant."

"Sorry," Emishi said flippantly. Sakura should have reached cover by now. "Already taken."

Saizou hissed and gestured, and lengths of thread went spinning across towards Emishi. His followers spread out to spin their own nets, and Emishi found himself forced to parry faster and faster with his whip, twirling it to block, not having enough time or space to launch any aggressive moves himself, and then a length of thread sliced across his chest and brought the blood spilling out. And then another. And another. They were cutting him to pieces by inches.

That was it.

Saizou took a step forward. "I am prepared to accept your surrender," he purred. "If you crawl."

Close enough.

Emishi screamed, "Bloody Storm!" and ignited his blood. It went up in a halo of scarlet, ripping the oxygen from the air around him so that he couldn't breathe, scorching his skin and burning, burning, and he had to close his eyes because he could no longer endure the heat, _and please let this be enough, they were close to me, how can threads fight fire, Shido, I am sorry, but you saved me once before, and that was enough, and I was saved for this, and let this be what makes the difference . . ._

Gentle angel wings enfolded him and shielded him from the fire and lowered him softly to the ground. He blinked and looked up at the world through a mist of rosy dawn.

This must be Heaven, then. Yes, that was Sakura speaking, and her voice was quite distinct even though there seemed to be a lot of screaming and whimpers and sprinklers going on in the background.

Or perhaps it wasn't. He fought to move, to get past the folds of pink fabric and the screaming of his own body's pain, and he raised his head enough to see her standing between him and the four Black Thread users who were still upright, though one of them was swaying and trying to beat out flames.

"Kakei," Saizou was saying. "Kakei Sakura, your family is not without honour. If you wish to swear allegiance to me, as _rightful_ heir to the Fuuchoin, then I can offer you a position of respect. You are the eldest child, and your support would strengthen my position. I might even consider sparing certain of your dependents, should you wish it."

Emishi was able to see Sakura's face freeze into an expression of perfect and absolute disdain. Her speech had the archaic formality of an old romance. "Saizou-san -- forgive this person, for she is unaware of any family name which he may claim -- is mistaken. This person has no wish to declare any sort of allegiance to him. Not only is she already sworn elsewhere, but there already is an heir to the Fuuchoin, and that person is not Saizou-san." She stood there, the scorched remains of her shawl between her hands, and looked at Saizou with a bland disdain.

Saizou spat to one side. "Very well. Kill her."

Threads pale as moonlight came from somewhere behind Emishi to cross around him and in front of Sakura, spinning a barrier between them and the Black Thread users, and Kazuki's voice said, "I think _not_."

* * *

There was a distant bellowing in the distance. It could have been a lion roaring. It could have been a maddened elephant trumpeting. It could have been a rampant ox preparing to gore.

It was getting closer.

"Um," Ginji said. "That sounds like someone yelling that his desire is itching."

"Crap," Ban muttered.


	10. Chapter Ten

They came out into a garden. At first Toshiki thought that they'd somehow managed to step outside, but high overhead, above the arching branches and the hazy sparkle of falling water, he could see the pallor of a distant ceiling. Everything was green and brown, shocking to the eyes after the grey corridors outside.

"Wow," Ren breathed.

The air was thick with the scent of flowers and growing things. _Kazuki would like this_ , Toshiki thought, then wrenched himself back to reality. This could all be another of those holograms. In reality, they could be standing in the middle of an empty room.

But if he started thinking like that, he'd never even try to escape.

"There have to be maintenance entrances and exits to here," he said firmly, walking further into the room. The ground under his feet had the soft firmness of good soil. "It'd need expert upkeep. Look how big the place is. They're less likely to be observed than the main passages, and they might even go near the Beltline. Come on."

"Grandfather would have liked this place," Ren said quietly, in unconscious repetition of Toshiki's own thoughts. "He never left Mugenjou. But he would have liked this."

Toshiki touched her shoulder. "Come on. Right now, he'd want you safely out of here."

Ren choked on a bitter snort of laughter. "Out of here? Toshiki-san, maybe I can leave Babylon City, but how can I ever get "out of here"? Don't you know what I am?"

"Yes." He kept his tone level, sensing how near she was to hysterics. But he understood, he understood very well. Reality was what you made of it. "You're Kazuki's friend."

She swallowed, took a breath, swallowed again, then nodded. "Sorry. Yes. We have to get out of here."

"I'm afraid not," said a man's voice from behind them.

* * *

Ren flinched into the shelter of Toshiki's arm as she turned. The man standing near the door was familiar to her -- the fourth of the Kings, Masaki. He was smiling, just as he had always been in the days of VOLTS, and his heavy trenchcoat hung on his shoulders like a military uniform. "You'd make this a great deal easier if you just turn around now and go back, Toshiki-kun, Ren-kun," he noted, voice friendly and agreeable.

Toshiki's eyes were stormy with rage. "You -- that _you_ should join them, Masaki --"

"Oh, spare me the dramatics," Masaki interrupted. "I haven't joined them. I have always _been_ them. If we're going to point fingers, then you're the only traitor in this room."

Toshiki grew pale, and his jaw set firmly. "Ren," he said, almost absent-mindedly, "Run." He shoved her to one side, so that she fell to her hands and knees, and brought his hands up and together before gesturing towards Masaki as though he was hitting a drum open-palmed.

Masaki smiled, and light fluxed around him in a glowing semicircular shield. The air between the two shuddered and concussed, sending Ren tumbling across the grass again. She brought her arms up to shield her head, _this isn't any worse than a standard workout, believe that, don't lose control,_ and came to a stop against the roots of a tree. They hurt.

Toshiki fell back a step, and circled round to the right, away from her. Light fell between the leaves of the trees above him, and dappled him in patterns of light and shade. "I don't understand," he snarled at Masaki. "Did Raitei mean _nothing_ to you?"

Ren pulled herself to her feet, and edged to her left, keeping her head down, trying to make her movements inconspicuous. She couldn't run out on Toshiki, but he'd told her to run and he was in charge, but she couldn't leave him, but . . .

"He was who he was," Masaki said, and suddenly there was a flash, no, an _explosion_ of light that was so bright it even drowned out shadows and left nothing but bright whiteness behind it.

She should have known he would do that. She'd seen him play those games with light before -- _and why is it that something just stung my memory, something else about light_ \-- but in any case she had to get away, she had to hope that Toshiki had dodged in time.

She had to make Toshiki's choice to fight worthwhile.

She could still hear. She could hear footsteps moving past her, towards Toshiki, and further away she could hear the sound of Toshiki's feet in water, _there had been a stream there, I remember that,_ and branches creaking overhead.

"And," Masaki said, thoughtfully, "I've just had word that our primary targets are within range. We don't need you any more, Toshiki-kun."

The air hummed around him, growing like the buzz of an oncoming hurricane.

_Her grandfather lying there dead and her powerless to save him._

"No," Ren whispered to herself, and aimed low, throwing herself forward blindly to tackle Masaki's legs. She felt his trenchcoat against her cheek as the concussion exploded above her, felt Masaki lose his balance and stagger, felt him wrench free, his foot take her in the chest and send her rolling again, but above it all there was a thunder of crashing and collapsing that she could only dimly correlate to the trees which had been standing above.

The noise stopped. She tried to catch her breath, brought herself up onto one knee.

Masaki's feet approached her. Her eyes stung, but now she could distinguish patterns of light and shadow, and he was a great looming darkness above her. "Well," he said pleasantly. "That was a waste of time on your part."

No voice from where Toshiki had been, no steps, only a slight creaking of settling timber and dripping of water.

"No," she murmured. "No."

"Don't worry," Masaki said, and he reached down to grasp her shoulder, pulling her to her feet, his hand like steel. "You're going to be part of something which will give your whole life meaning, Ren-kun. Who can ask for anything better?"

He hit her again, and there was darkness.

* * *

A phone clicked open. "Marassa?"

"Marassa."

"Ahh. How are things going?"

"Mixed. I have the disk, but I wasn't able to clean things up neatly. Apparently Shido isn't as bed-bound as we'd heard."

"Can they track you?"

"Not now. I'm almost at Mugenjou. I take it the way's prepared?"

"Of course. You should have a straight run through and up."

"And the targets inside the City?"

"Split as planned and travelling. We've turned Fudou loose, because he was getting uncontrollable, but we can keep him moving until we're ready to run the catch on that pair."

"And everything's set for me to deal with the transporters?"

"Oh yes. No names, I take it?"

"I don't want to mention _his_ name till we're ready. We can't afford any little accidents."

"Sensible. The audio's picked up that all four of them are realising it was a trap."

"Oh well, we expected it sooner or later."

"Mm-hm. Oh, and . . . ah, just had a communication in. We've lost our spare host. I'm afraid we don't have the luxury of a replacement any more -- we've got to take the prime candidate alive. Unless you want to go back and pick up the girl Rena?"

"Her? No. I told you before, she went through the same process as Toshiki, but I'm not convinced she has the physical capacity to survive the stresses we require."

"Understood. I'll be waiting for you with the bodyguard, at the gate to the Beltline."

"Till then."

"I can't wait."

"Nor can I."

* * *

Kazuki walked forward, each step casual, poised, irreproachable. Toshiki's sash lay round his hips like a promise. "I think not," he said again, and turned to Sakura. "Sakura-kun, who would this person be?"

Sakura inclined her head to him, and while he was no longer her master, he could see the relief in her eyes at being able to cede leadership to him. "He states that his name is Saizou, Kazuki-sama," she answered, "and that he has some connection to the Fuuchoin School."

The threadmaster at the centre of the knot of enemies bristled and flung up his head like a young stallion. "I am heir to the Fuuchoin School!"

"Oh." Kazuki paused next to Sakura, Juubei at his back. He cast a quick glance down at Emishi, who lay sizzling gently in the remains of Sakura's shawl.

Emishi grinned up at him and gave him a wink and a thumbs up. Kazuki nodded back, and returned his attention to Saizou before Emishi could get more demonstrative.

"I challenge you!" Saizou declared, apparently unable to wait any longer. "Face me and determine who is the _true_ Fuuchoin heir!"

Kazuki moved his head very slightly. The bells in his hair rustled. He looked at his opponent. The young man had the build and balance that he would expect from a Fuuchoin-trained fighter, and he looked to be the same age as Kazuki, but his hair was cut brusquely short, and his eyes and mouth were petulant and spoiled. "Why should I fight you?" he asked mildly. "You are too young to have been there when my family were killed." He could feel the ice seeping into his voice as he spoke, hear the coldness in the tones and inflections of his words. "Why should I sully my koto strings with someone as inexperienced and petty as you?"

"You . . . you . . ." Saizou sputtered. "How dare you insult me like this! _I_ am the Fuuchoin heir! My father killed your parents and I will kill you!"

Kazuki's heart beat like thunder. _Hush,_ he whispered to his fury, _be still a little longer, be patient a little while, till I unleash you in a thousand whips._ "Then show me your father," he replied. "And let me execute justice on him."

There was a ripple of obsequious laughter from the three other thread-users standing around Saizou. Saizou himself smirked. "The old man -- died. I have his place now. I rule now."

"Then you must pay for his sins," Kazuki murmured, and slid into motion.

Sakura and Juubei fanned out behind him, having been waiting for his signal to move. A spray of needles from Juubei had Saizou's minions jumping back, while Sakura spread her cloth between her hands and flung it out into a shield to cover the pair of them.

Kazuki knew that he could rely on them to deal with the lesser Black Thread users. Saizou, however, was his opponent.

"Fuuchoin offensive technique 27-1 -- Blades of living water!" he called, bringing the threads hissing from his fingers to slice across towards Saizou. A simple offensive move, and if he judged the other correctly, he'd counter with . . .

"Fuuchoin technique 15-3 -- Chrysalis!" Saizou replied, tossing the criss-cross pattern into the air in front of him so that Kazuki's strings rattled against it like raindrops. He turned, gesturing as he raked threads across the room towards Kazuki in turn. "Chrysalis to Flood!"

"Flood to Torrent!" Kazuki answered, diverting Saizou's blow and sending a streaming mass of threads at him.

"Torrent to Cyclone!" Saizou screamed. His forms were meticulously correct, and strong, very strong.

Kazuki replied with the Chrysalis again, and instead of an immediate response, paused to think. The other was good. Had matters been different, it would have been a pleasure to train with him or work against him. He knew the traditional Fuuchoin forms. He'd probably know the more exotic ones as well.

And had matters been different, it would even have been a pleasure to stand here all day and duel with the son of the man who killed his parents, the one who'd destroyed his life.

But there was more than that at stake; more than just his gratification or his revenge. There was Toshiki's life. If there was one thing that Mugenjou had taught him, that the burning of the Fuuchoin home had taught him, it was that the living mattered more than the dead.

"Cyclone to Tidal Wave!" Saizou shouted. Kazuki barely parried the blow. Threads ripped into the concrete and metal around him, tearing chunks out of the walls and floor, spattering gravel and steel fragments in a wide spray behind him. "Take that, _Kazuki_! I'm the Fuuchoin!"

"And you killed your own father to do it?" Kazuki guessed out loud. The other's tone when he had talked about his father's death made it all but certain. _Family life among the Black Threads. No peace. No loyalty. Only this hunger for power._

Saizou laughed wildly. "He spent his life brooding about you because you escaped him. I mastered him and I'll master you as well!"

_No loyalty, no cooperation . . ._ A half-formed image came rising into Kazuki's mind like a fish through water. The days of training with his father, of learning the linked attacks where two sets of threads could work together, assuming that the users completely trusted each other. Things that would surely never, _never_ be practiced among people like this. "Blades of living water!" he called, resetting the pattern of his strings to the basic one that his father had shown him all those years ago, leaving those gaps for the other user to blend his own threads into the weaving, the gaps that would be seen only as lethal flaws by someone who had never learned the form . . .

Saizou took the bait. With a vicious smirk that turned his smiling face to something vile, he sent his black threads through the holes in the pattern so that they bit into Kazuki's flesh. Cloth ripped and blood ran.

Kazuki went down on one knee, but his hands were sure. "Water mingles with other water -- hand clasps hand!" he called, and he closed the pattern, taking control of both sets of threads.

"What --" Saizou began to say, and then his threads convulsed and snapped in his hands as Kazuki cracked them like whips. He screamed as blood spurted from between his fingers, and took a stumbling pace back. "No! No, you can't do that, that isn't Fuuchoin, stop!"

Kazuki took a deep shuddering breath. "Saizou-kun. What is the Black Thread connection to Mugenjou? Tell me that, and . . . things may be easier for you."

Saizou kept a firm hold of the threads in his hands, though his own blood was running down them now, marking them out in scarlet against the air. "I'll tell you this for nothing, Kazuki. The Black Thread users have served Babylon City for fifty years now. If we have a connection to Mugenjou, it's through them. And I'll tell you something else -- they were the ones who told us where to find you today and how to make you come to us."

Kazuki straightened to stand on his feet again. The pattern of threads hummed between him and Saizou with increasing tension. "And what did they ask for that favour, Saizou-kun?" he said with acid-fine gentleness.

"The boy Makubex," Saizou replied, and jerked with all his strength on the interwoven threads, so that they lashed and whipped through the air.

With a calm deliberation, Kazuki moved into the final step of the pattern. "Monsoon!" he called, and brought his hands down with the firm power of a master of the clan.

Saizou screamed in agony as his own threads snapped backwards through his hands, following the fine lines of muscle and bone. He released them, falling to his knees and clasping his hands to his chest, tears running from his eyes. "You -- damn you, Fuuchoin Kazuki, _damn_ you . . ."

Juubei and Sakura stepped away from the last of Saizou's minions. "Kazuki-sama?" Juubei enquired, and Kazuki could hear the full question in his voice. _Shall I finish it? Shall I dispose of him for you? Shall it be the full execution?_

Kazuki shook his head. "Leave him to his servants, when they awake. I have cut his tendons. They will mend, but he will never be able to use threads again properly." He turned away from the screaming young man. "Come. Juubei. Sakura. Bring Emishi. Bring Kanou-kun -- I left him around the corner. We have work to do."


	11. Chapter Eleven

Juubei dropped Kanou on the ground in a corner of the room. He landed with a thud, rolling over on one side, and lay there limply.

"Is he faking unconsciousness?" Makubex asked curiously without looking round, his fingers flickering over the multiple keyboards in front of him.

"No," Juubei answered, after a prod with a scientific toe. "I can wake him up if you want to question him, though."

"I'm not sure that he would say anything useful," Kazuki commented. He and Sakura supported Emishi over to a couch at one side, lowering him gently onto the cushions.

"Surely he must have seen something?" Makubex finished entering a string of commands, and lowered his hands. "Thank you, by the way. Thank you both very much."

Kazuki straightened, tossing his hair back. "It was our pleasure."

"But where is Toshiki?" Sakura asked softly as she began to clean Emishi's wounds.

Juubei felt his own face tighten into a frown, and he heard Kazuki stiffen -- a whisper of fabric, a shiver of bells. "He was captured," he said brusquely before his lord could answer. "We believe he was taken by Kagami Kyouji, which implies Babylon City."

"This is too well-timed to be at all coincidental." Makubex turned to face them, his face grimmer than should have been possible for his youth. "Everything happening at the same time; Toshiki kidnapped, the assault on my headquarters, the GetBackers going missing --"

"What?" Kazuki interrupted. "But --"

"I've lost them." Makubex raised both hands. "Hear me out. They were reported as going to intercept Doctor Jackal and Lady Poison. I have no active contact from them after that point, but I do," and he indicated one screen that was a mass of enlarged shadowy forms, "have a visual record of Doctor Jackal and three unidentified people entering Mugenjou half an hour ago. We're lucky I even have that."

Sakura looked up from the gently moaning Emishi. "Do you mean, Makubex, that the same computer malfunctions and viruses which crippled our defenses . . ."

Makubex nodded as she trailed off. "Exactly. The probability approaches zero that this could all be chance. Everything had been arranged."

"By Babylon City," Juubei said coldly. "Who else could interfere with your computers like this, Makubex?"

"Mm." Makubex did not attempt false modesty. "Exactly. So. We need to reach Babylon City --"

"Sakura and Emishi will remain here to guard you," Kazuki said swiftly, before either of them had the chance to protest or feel the pain of divided loyalty. "Juubei and I will go up past the Beltline."

Makubex bit his lip. "But when you tried last time . . ."

Kazuki cut him off again. "We simply did not have the impetus that we do this time. I will _not_ be stopped."

"Yes, yes," Makubex said, spinning back to the computer. "By all means. But we also need to find where you can enter Babylon City. The Beltline is a maze, and the area beyond it probably worse. We need a way in."

"Can you find Kagami Kyoji's tracks?" Juubei suggested. "He had Toshiki with him. Even if they blanked out the cameras so that you could not see him, there may be a trail of malfunctions."

"That's a thought." Makubex's fingers were a rattling blur on the keyboard.

"Emishi!" Sakura said firmly. "Stay where you are."

"But, Sakura," Emishi protested, "there's an eagle at the window."

They all turned to look. An eagle was perched on the windowsill, staring in with a brooding gaze of half-insane intensity.

"And there's something tied to its leg," Emishi added helpfully.

* * *

They stepped out into a large room, wide and drafty as a barn, and Ban knew in his bones that this was where the trap had been prepared for them. Shafts of light tilted down from the ceiling from concealed skylights, piercing through the dusty air to chequer the floor with patches of light and shadow. At the end of the room a man hung from a spike in the wall, his hands bound above his head, the spike placed through the bindings to hold him in place. His eyes were closed. He did not attempt to call to them.

"Teshimine!" Ginji gasped, with an undernote of absolute fury to his voice that Ban recognised as Raitei's presence. Static crackled and spat as he started across the floor towards him.

"Wait," Ban said, grasping Ginji's shoulder. "He's bait."

Ginji took a deep breath. His muscles tensed under Ban's grip, then relaxed. "We can't leave him there," he said, his eyes burning.

"We won't. Just be careful." Ban held Ginji's shoulder a moment longer, then released him.

They stepped into the room together. Ban's eyes flicked from side to side. There were no signs of ambush, no waiting mob, no disguised assassins, no hidden guns, no sudden movements . . . He fell back, letting Ginji approach Teshimine as he turned to guard the other GetBacker's rear.

He thought he could hear Teshimine mumbling something, but couldn't quite make the words out.

A howl split the air, and Fudou Takuma was standing in one of the passageways, his coat blowing round him, a glint of absolute pure insanity in his visible eye. "Midou! MIDOUUU! At last! I'm going to tear you to pieces, Midou! I'm going to drink your blood . . ."

"I was getting tired of waiting," Ban muttered, and charged to meet him.

* * *

There was a note in Shido's handwriting and a CD in a package tied to the eagle's leg. The note read simply, **Hevn gone enemy, attempted to burn Honky-Tonk, fled. Paul had this CD, left by Teshimine last year.**

There was a single text file on the CD.

They read it silently, Sakura kneeling beside Makubex, Juubei and Kazuki supporting Emishi.

**I was known as Gen. My name was important once. I hope that you would not know it now if you heard it.**

**If you read this, then I am dead.**

**I have entrusted this file to one of the few honourable people I know. I would have liked to give it to Makubex, but it would have been too dangerous for him. Are you reading this, Makubex? If so, I am sorry for all the things I could never tell you. But they were watching you more than anyone, my child. They of all people knew your capabilities.**

**Names may be caught by viral software, so instead of mentioning names, I will tell you a story.**

**Once upon a time, there were four people who studied power. One was an architect, one was a doctor, one was a specialist, and one -- well, let's call him a generalist. And they all lived together in the tower that the Architect built for them.**

**These four people had studied human potential and human religion. They'd noted that people are, at times, capable of achieving things far beyond their normal capacities. While they didn't all believe in the supernatural, they were prepared to accept that there were things which can't be categorised by current science. They wanted to channel and use that unknown potential.**

**Now, one of the occasions where this potential had been most effectively studied was in what is called voodoo.**

**(I can imagine that if some people are reading this, they will be very interested at this point.)**

**Let us assume, this Brains Trust (we need a name for them, don't we?) said, that this is an effective way of calling down the supernatural into a physical form. Perhaps the ceremonies and rites correspond to some unknown laws that we don't yet understand, the _vevers_ are mental circuitry which we don't yet have the key to. If we can locate those keys, learn those laws, then we can use these "gods" rather than let them use us.**

**There was a preliminary attempt. It went wrong.**

**My child (I am sure you are reading this), it hurts to write about it even now. Whatever we may have come to since, once he was my friend, as close as a brother. He knowingly submitted himself to the rituals because he thought he could control them. But someone else looked out of his eyes when we had finished. The Watcher at the Crossroads was there. He was amused. He kept the body. He chose to leave us in peace, on the understanding that we would not move against him, but --**

**What the others saw as a temporary setback, the Architect saw as a warning. I said that we should go no further. I was . . . outvoted. In the absence of a fourth member (for that person had now gone to pursue his new interests) there were two of them and one of me, and, to be frank, they held power which I did not. I had already raised Mugenjou.**

**They no longer needed me.**

**Makubex, this is one of the great secrets of Mugenjou. It was raised as a tower that would bridge Earth and Heaven, that would allow power to be channelled down. But in the higher reaches of this Tower of Babel, there were dreams of flesh to match the dreams of power. The Specialist used the Doctor's research and created templates of flesh to match the virtual templates of personality that you already know about. If they could not conveniently invite the Powers into a volunteer, then they would build bodies for those Powers to inhabit, and build blank minds to overwrite their personalities, and build children who had the abilities to control those Powers and summon them. They would build . . .**

**. . . you understand, don't you?**

**There were failures. I will not discuss that.**

**By this time I had been exiled to lower Mugenjou, and I admit that it was partly voluntary. Here, I did not need to see the people whom I had once known as friends. I did not have to know what they were doing. They were glad to leave it that way.**

**The first successful child had his growth accelerated. He was reared in loyalty, obedience, honour. He still has all those things, but he cannot break the chains he grew up in.**

**Other children followed. The Marassa, the Jumeaux as they were called; one raised to operate outside Mugenjou, the other to work within it, but both of them bound to each other. A Thunder Emperor to provide the source power for the next attempt. A line of Voodoo Children to serve as hosts. Except that there were only two successful specimens (note how easy it is to write "specimens", Makubex, how easy it is to reduce human life to so little), and one of them ran away carrying the other in his arms.**

**I still don't know why they gave you to me, and Ren afterwards, but I have been grateful for that.**

**I have been lonely, you see.**

**The Specialist has made herself a new body. Cloned flesh, transferred engrams; this is the world she lives in. To be fair to her, it has never been for herself, but always for the knowledge that she gained. But nothing else has ever mattered to her. She would wade in blood to the knees and wash her hands in it without caring.**

**The Doctor -- is long gone.**

**The fourth man? Well. He is still there. He is more powerful than ever. By now you must realise who he is.**

**And if you read this, then I am dead. My last piece of courage, to leave this behind me as an explanation and an apology of sorts. I gave it to a person I know, who is honourable enough to see that it is left in safe keeping, though firmly enough bound that he will not take any action himself. I enjoy this little life that I still have; I do not want to do more. I do not want to die.**

**We built to reach Heaven, Makubex. I am not sure what scares me more; that we might have failed, or that they might succeed.**

The silence in the room was broken by the bleeping of a monitor. Makubex hit a switch, turning to face it. The screen dissolved into the image of a hall full of people, the camera focus on a tall figure pushing her way through the mob, her blonde hair caught back under a headscarf, her breasts swinging as magnificently as ever.

Kazuki rose to his feet smoothly. "Juubei. With me, now," he commanded.

Makubex frowned. "Kazuki, surely --"

Kazuki shook his head. Bells whispered. "No, Makubex; this is our chance, now. If she's heading for Babylon City, and we can follow her, then we can enter as well. We'll stay in contact, but we must go now . . ."

Makubex nodded crisply. Behind him, Sakura rested a hand on his shoulder, and Emishi summoned up a battered grin. "Go," he said. "And good luck."

* * *

This time Fudou Takuma didn't bother with calling out the seconds or slowly ratcheting up the tension as he looked forward in time. No. This time he was going to rip Midou Ban to pieces first and _then_ count off the seconds as he watched the other man die, as he listened to those last gasping breaths . . .

He was already looking two seconds ahead. It was a strain, but it was manageable. It was anticipation. It was watching the shifts in Midou's muscles, the twitches in his eyes, seeing the blur of _will be_ overlaying _now_. And it was all here and now, it was true, Babylon City had finally given him what they promised.

He tasted his own blood in his mouth.

The first important thing

(we charge, we connect, we spin, we turn, we prepare for the next charge)

was to remember

(in the distance the Ginji boy is running towards the chained Teshimine and shouting something)

not to look in Midou's eyes.

(but the Ginji boy isn't important)

But that was the easiest thing in the world, because he'd be able to _see_ that about to happen if it was

(Midou shouts an insult)

and it wasn't, in fact, what was about to happen was that they would charge again and Midou would scrape a blow along the side of his ribs and he'd allow it in order to get closer and carve a gash across Midou's chest

(they charge again and Midou scrapes a blow along the side of his ribs and he allows it in order to get closer and carve a gash across Midou's chest)

and there was blood on his claws now.

He hadn't even bothered to wear his gloves this time.

Midou tried to say something about Babylon City manipulating him and using him. Midou was even more stupid than usual. Fudou was aware that the people from Babylon City had healed him, upgraded his arm, and dangled Midou in front of him like bait on a hook in order to procure this fight, this beautiful, precious fight. He didn't care. As long as it went on, as long as he could feel Midou's blood hot and slick on the steel of his claws, it didn't matter.

(the Ginji boy was lifting Teshimine down from his chains)

Future became present and the moment when he was moving around Midou's strike became the moment when he _was_ moving around Midou's strike and time was and time had been and time would be again and Midou was snarling and he was laughing, laughing.

"Three seconds!" he called. He wanted it now. He wanted the violence and the explosion of blood and having Midou _down_ and _begging_ and he couldn't wait any longer.

Light haloed the two of them, exploding from the far end of the room and casting their shadows long and black against the wall.

"Ginji!" Midou screamed, and tried to duck past him, but he'd seen that

(was seeing it)

and he pounced like a tiger

(cut in, cut down)

and ripped across Midou's back, tearing the shirt away from his body, and blood spurted out, and Midou rolled away cursing, and he was finding it hard to breathe for some reason, ah, broken ribs, yes, he remembered seeing that Midou would break those ribs but it didn't matter, because Midou was bleeding and there was a great smear of blood across the floor, and

(light exploded)

light exploded across the room and threw the pair of them against the floor like rag dolls.

He struggled for focus, blinking against the whirl of brightness that still dazzled him. A man stood at its centre, a dark heart to the light.

There was a grunt from where Midou had been thrown, then slower breathing, unconsciousness. No. No, that couldn't happen. Midou was his. He knew each one of the other man's breaths, he could count his heartbeats, nobody could take Midou away from him, he would have Midou's blood . . .

"Sorry," the man in the light said. It was the Babylon City man, Masaki, the one who had been so happy to make bargains with him, to arrange to distract Midou while they took Ginji. "Time's up."

"Midou's mine," he growled, and tried to rise.

"No." There was a calm dispassion to Masaki's voice. "We don't need you any more, Fudou Takuma."

Fudou opened his eyes to the future again.

In three seconds he died. Time was. Time would be. Time was gone. That was all.

Three. Two.

"Midou," he tried to say, and then time ran out and future became present and there was light and then he was gone.


	12. Chapter Twelve

The mobs were out in Mugenjou's streets and corridors, driven by some instinct for danger. The hallways seethed with impromptu gatherings, spur-of-the-moment doomsayers, and gangs making the best of the situation by indulging in a little looting, or just swaggering to keep up their own spirits.

None of them tried to impede Juubei and Kazuki. As the two of them passed, thugs found something else to do, sober citizens decided that they'd rather be indoors, and drunkards abruptly sobered up.

Kazuki would have found it all rather charming, if he'd had the spare attention to notice it.

"You're catching up." Static warped Makubex's voice, but Kazuki's mobile phone was just barely functional. They'd agreed to keep the references as vague as possible, in case Babylon City was listening. "I've got you and I've got her. First right off where you are, then straight ahead, then down the flight of stairs, and you'll be on the tenth floor and the walkway directly above where she currently is."

"Excellent," Kazuki said. "Excuse me a moment --"

They took the corner wide, as Juubei moved into the lead and a group of punks abruptly scattered to take an interest in their cigarettes.

"-- ahead and now going down. Just a moment."

The two of them separated at the foot of the stairs to peer over the edge of the walkway. Juubei coughed, then pointed. "Down there, Kazuki-sama."

Kazuki moved to join him. Yes, there was Hevn, swaying her way along the corridor in quick tapping steps, hair floating from side to side with each step, hips swinging in a tick, tock, tick with her walk, the tiers of her skirt flicking around her ankles. Nobody was trying to get in her way. That was unusual.

"Stay up here for the moment," he murmured to Juubei. "Follow in parallel. Don't go down unless she changes corridor. We don't want her to spot us."

"Of course, Kazuki-sama," Juubei murmured in tones that didn't quite cross the line into _are you trying to teach me the basics_ but came quite close to it.

Kazuki gave a quick, apologetic nod, and headed along the walkway, his eyes on Hevn ahead of and below them.

She stopped next to a doorway, and paused to tap something into the keypad there, her body turned to shield the keypad from the people passing by. Kazuki squinted, hanging back, just close enough to see the movement of her hand.

The door opened smoothly, receding into the wall. Hevn stepped through into the brightly-lit interior, visible for a moment against clean white walls, and then the door slid closed again, hiding her from view.

"3275," he murmured, half to Juubei, half to himself. "Give her five minutes, then follow."

Five minutes later, he said, "We're going in," to the phone, turned it off, and slid it into his pocket before dropping neatly over the edge of the walkway into the corridor below. Juubei was an instant behind him, landing softly on the balls of his feet, a shadow at his back.

Perhaps this would lead them to Toshiki as well? He could only hope so.

None of the people shuffling by paid any attention to them either. This wasn't an area he knew well; it was one of the seedier parts, where Volts had only intervened if absolutely necessary, leaving it to churn away in sullen, quiet misery. Kazuki turned away from them, trusting Juubei to watch for trouble, and pressed the four keys in sequence.

The door slid open. Inside was a single well-lit white-walled room, an elevator of some sort. It was empty.

Kazuki stepped inside, and gestured Juubei to follow him. There was a single button on the wall; it didn't even have a symbol on it. Clearly this elevator only went in one direction. In that case, Hevn must have also gone the same way. Convenient.

He pressed the button. The door slid shut.

There was a faint trembling as the lift began to rise. Kazuki looked around. Slick white plastic walls, sparkling clean. Slick white floor of the same material. He was about to comment on it when he saw Juubei cock his head, hesitate, then look up, and he did the same.

Thin tendrils of pale vapor were coming from tiny holes at the seam between the walls and the ceiling.

"The button!" he snapped. "Wreck the circuitry --" The button was making lazy circles in his vision, going round and round and then swelling like a great luminous porthole, slowly opening like an eye. He was lying against Juubei, soft, warm, supporting him, white walls, bright eye, pale air that ran into his lungs and made him tired, so tired. Juubei was saying something but he couldn't hear it, he could only feel it in his bones, like a promise, like a heartbeat, and the brightness was all around him, was bright darkness, was darkness.

* * *

They had been deceived, decoyed, and misdirected. Himiko would not have described herself as the most impulsive of women, but should they run into the person responsible for this, she was strongly tempted _not_ to interfere when Akabane pulled out his scalpels.

Eh. She was a professional first, an offended woman second. However, she was currently an offended professional.

The corridor (and how long had they been walking through endless corridors? How long had they been passing through intersections that had all been alike, even though she'd scent-marked them to make sure they weren't going back on their steps?) was approaching a larger open space. The quality of the light was different there. She could taste new smells on the air; blood, alcohol, flour, flame.

Akabane raised a hand slightly. _Caution. Permit me to take the lead._

She nodded, and slipped the vials of Flame and Degeneration Scent from her belt, balancing them between her fingers, falling half a pace behind him.

They stepped into the room at the end of the corridor. It was far wider than she had expected, high and arching, with beams of metal interlacing on the walls and forming patterns on the ceiling. Three people stood at the centre of the room, beside a carved column that rose to the rafters; Hevn, Kagami, and the man she'd met at the start of the assignment, the one that the others had identified as Miroku Natsuhiko. Patterns of powder and blood on the floor around them teased at Himiko's memory. The tracery at Hevn's feet looked like an old-fashioned compass, or a crossroads. There was a bottle on the ground by her, and a cage with something in it -- birds of some sort, black chickens? -- and a knife lying on top. The image of the three figures and the surrounding traceries was like a photograph, though she couldn't say why. It meant something. She knew it all meant something.

Akabane's shoulders squared, and she heard him take a long slow hiss of indrawn breath. Edges clicked together in the palm of his gloved right hand.

_Voodoo child_ the voice of her past whispered to her, and she recognized ritual, but not which ritual.

Kagami and Miroku stepped forward, as Hevn raised her hands and cried out. A folded scarf held her hair back from her face. Her arms were bare, stained in red and black.

"Madam Negotiator," Akabane said, and Himiko could hear the shadow of death in his voice, "one more step on this road and you place yourself in my way."

Hevn twirled to face the four directions, calling the same thing each time. The words were in French. Himiko didn't understand them. They made her shiver.

Akabane tipped his hat with his free hand. "Bloody Sword," he whispered, and redness flowed out to become solid, to become a sword. He moved towards Hevn with the speed of a stooping hawk.

The Miroku moved to meet him, drawing a long blade from the canister which hung across his back. The two swords met in front of Hevn in a deep-toned bell-note, but Hevn herself ignored Akabane's blade, half talking, half singing, gesturing rhythmically.

And then there wasn't any more time for Himiko to watch, other than the normal in-battle awareness of where all the other combatants were, because Kagami was coming for her, sparkles trailing behind him like stardust. She circled and pivoted for room to maneuver, using a quick blast of Fire Scent to force him back.

Practicalities. Practicalities. He couldn't use Diamond Dust and risk killing Hevn. That was useful. Images, though . . .

Five Kagamis split apart and circled round to take her down from all directions. She jumped high, skidded low, and ran up the beams that patterned the wall, feet light as falling feathers as she heard Kagami pursuing her. Without even thinking she clipped the two vials she was holding back into their harness, and slipped out the Acceleration Scent instead. It had worked last time.

Hevn was still chanting. The Miroku yelled something, but his voice had changed, and she spared a glance down to see that it was a different man facing Akabane, pale-haired and with a shorter blade, but still in the same clothes -- damn Ban, why couldn't he just have explained whatever the stupid deal with the Miroku was? -- and the two of them still seemed matched, or at least neither of them was lying on the ground yet.

The thought which had been nagging at her got through. Someone had planned all this. Presumably whoever was behind this ambush now. They knew about her. Kagami knew that Acceleration Scent had almost let her take him down last time, which meant that either he had a way to deal with it now, or this whole fight was part of some sort of delaying strategy and the moment she used it --

The Miroku seemed to be straight weapons-users. They had to breathe.

"Doctor Jackal!" she screamed, pitching her voice to carry, and hoping that he wouldn't be so carried away with the thrill of bloodlust or the pride of battle that he'd ignore her. She took a sniff of Acceleration Scent and turned to race directly past Kagami and groundwards, ducking under his blow but making no attempt to respond, streaking towards the duelling swordsmen (wait, was the Miroku female and using a spear now? This was going too far) and gathered enough breath to yell, "Change partners!"

Hevn reached down to the cage at her feet and dragged out a black cockerel. It crowed and struggled in her hand as she slit its throat. Blood splashed across the floor and over her hands and dress.

"No!" Akabane parried the spear, turned his blow into a slice, and had it caught in a lock by a pair of daggers held by a shorter, sneering man. "Get the negotiator, Lady Poison! Trust me!"

Kagami's mirror-shard whistled above Himiko's head as she ducked and rolled, and survival instincts kept her moving and a couple of paces ahead of him, and she tracked laboriously through the thoughts of _this is the only time that Akabane has ever told me to take someone down_ and _this is the only time he has threatened a non-combatant_ , and the two facts together jarred her into action, let her sprint for Hevn and turn her momentum into a straight extended-palm strike at Hevn's throat.

Her fingers slammed into Kagami's shoulder as he threw himself between the two women, and she felt her blow go bone-deep as he took the thrust and brought his glass shard up in a parry. She ducked it and feinted right for a moment, as though to dodge sideways, then swung left, into and under that lethal fragment of mirror, trying for Hevn again; this time he didn't even attempt to be elegant about it, but threw himself on her like a jaguar, going for her wrists, openly trying to pin her down.

Behind him, Hevn screamed, "Carrefour! Carrefour! Carrefour!"

There was a muffled cry, and then a crunch as a blade bit into flesh, and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

_And it wasn't even as if he was a friend --_

Himiko fastened her teeth in Kagami's neck, kicked his ankle out from where he was supporting himself on it, half got her knee into his groin, slammed her elbow into his side, and was out from under him and running

_\-- he was just someone whom she had worked with for years, whom she knew better than other people did, who had always been at her back when she needed him, who had never treated her as a child, who was Doctor Jackal just as she was Lady Poison --_

to where Akabane lay on the floor, blood running from the wound in his side. Natsuhiko Miroku stood over him, sword still drawn, but he made no attempt to stop Himiko going on her knees next to him and touching one hand to his neck and knowing that it was quite simply too late and nothing could be enough

_\-- in all the mazes of criminals and contacts and professionals and cutouts and blank faces, he had been a real person --_

and that this was another death that she couldn't stop.

"Doctor Jackal?" She made a question of it. Her voice was level, even, and she floated above the ocean of grief.

"Not any more, child," he whispered. His eyes were softer than she had ever seen them, as though a different person were looking out at her through the familiar face. "Child -- Himiko -- I am sorry . . ."

His eyes closed. His breathing stopped. Beside her, his sword became a long streak of blood painted across the floor.

His blood was as red as death. Inside her, her heart skipped and then beat faster, faster, drums inside her, the dance that tore people apart. _Red death._ Her hand clenched around one of the vials at her belt, shattering it in her hand, and the fragments of glass cut into her fingers, the drug spread in her bloodstream. She was rising without even knowing it, Miroku Natsuhiko backing away as she moved towards him as smoothly as murder, her fingers touched his sword a first time, a second time, she swung round and raked a blow up the inside of his arm and brought more blood spilling out as the two of them danced across the surface of the floor, across the howling sea of pain that she would not yet allow herself to fall into, too close to each other for Kagami to strike.

_From another time, another place; imagine the drop of water falling into the pool below. Do not let yourself be touched. Feel the grief, feel the pain, but do not let them be your master. See. Hear. Know. Move._

They spun across the floor together, the Miroku flowing between faces and shapes -- a white-haired man, the woman, a man with a scar across his face, a boy with glasses and spinning rings -- but each time she drew blood, and each time it wasn't _enough_. The Miroku, the seven-faces-in-one, was constantly renewed with each change, his wounds healed, his strength fresh again. There was no time to draw on her other poisons, only to keep the wheel of the combat turning, and though the anger and the thirst for vengeance still ran in her without stopping, with each blow she scored she knew that it wouldn't be enough to kill him.

Back to the original Miroku Natsuhiko again. Three more strikes, and then something flickered in the shadows of his eyes, and she realised it was coming, but she couldn't move quite fast enough to evade Kagami's grab at her wrist from behind her.

The flat of the blade coming towards her, and her own reflection in it for a moment; calm, weeping, utterly mad eyes.

Darkness.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

"I understand she has unusual capabilities."

Himiko heard the voice as she swam upwards through darkness. She kept her eyes closed, of course -- give nothing away, don't betray that you're awake, lessons that Yamato had taught her -- but she tasted the air around her.

The smell of blood drowned out everything else.

"She does." That was Kagami's voice. "Precautions have been taken."

Her arms were restrained behind her back, crossed and bound at the wrists. She didn't try straining against the bindings yet, but she registered them, letting herself become aware of their light weight, their smooth texture. _Plastic rather than metal. Probably resistant to my Corrosion Scent._

A sharply pointed toe caught her under the ribs, rolling her onto her back. She gasped as her head thumped against the floor, and let her eyes flicker open.

Hevn stood there, foot still meditatively extended. A folded scarf held her hair back from her face. She raised a blood-smeared hand to undo it, to let the yellow waves come spilling round her shoulders, and smiled down at Himiko. There wasn't even the familiar annoyance to her eyes, or the familiar briskness to her lips, but instead there was the slow comfortable smile of an adult who is at last freed from the needs of playing some game with children and can finally relax into her own nature. "Don't try to struggle, Voodoo Child," she advised Himiko. "It'll be easier on you."

Himiko's mouth was too dry for her to spit. She stared up at Hevn, and wondered if she had ever known the woman. "Why?" she asked. "Why -- why betray all of us --"

Kagami stepped gracefully to Hevn's side, the rips in his clothing seeming no more than casual accessorising. "Because my sister has never been your ally in the first place," he answered, and let his hand drift to stroke Hevn's cheek, turning her face to his, bending her into a willing kiss. Hevn's hair tumbled across Kagami's shoulder and seemed to mingle with his own for a moment in traceries of leprous gold.

Miroku -- it was the oldest-looking one now, the one she'd met as Miroku Natsuhiko -- coughed discreetly. "And after she's been taken up and deposited?"

Hevn partly disengaged herself from Kagami, still draping herself over him. "You will of course receive your payment. Have no fear. Everything has gone according to plan."

Himiko tried to coil her legs discreetly underneath her, but Miroku Natsuhiko caught sight of the movement and grabbed her collar, hoisting her to her feet by the tattered remnants of her blouse. "Ready to walk?" he asked pleasantly. "Good."

Kagami moved his hand slightly, and a sharp piece of mirror flickered into it. "And don't try Puppet Scent. You were given an injection while you were unconscious. If you attempt to produce it, even your rather unique metabolism will have -- problems."

"What do you know about my metabolism?" Himiko grated. It might be true. It might not. Either way, this wasn't the moment to try. A small enclosed space would be better.

Hevn threw back her head and laughed. "Shall we show her, brother?"

Kagami shrugged. "Why not? It's close to our route. If Miroku-san has no objection?"

Behind her, Miroku Natsuhiko snorted. "It makes no difference to me."

A cellphone in the folds of Hevn's skirts ran. She plucked it out, flicked it open, and held it to her ear. "Hevn here -- oh, really? Good. Thank you. I'll be right down."

Snapping the phone shut, she turned to Kagami. "Would you mind taking care of the Voodoo Child, brother? I've just been informed that our latest guests are awake."

Kagami swept a smooth bow. "Of course, sister. But first --" He caught her by the shoulders, and in a gesture that was as much hungry as it was sexual, pressed his lips against hers in another devouring kiss, hands tracing down over her torso. Hevn sighed as she returned it, body melting against him, hands locking behind his neck.

Himiko's vision blurred for a moment. The embracing pair -- brother and sister? How could that be? -- seemed to meld together like an insane sculpture, and it was only Miroku's grip on her collar, and her last remaining shreds of pride, that kept her standing as Hevn finally loosened herself and paced away.

Kagami chuckled, and was still chuckling as he led Miroku and Himiko to the far doorway.

Himiko would not look back to see the body on the floor. She would not.

* * *

"I'm sorry," the voice said. It was a voice that had haunted Ginji's gentler dreams for years now. "I wish it hadn't had to be this way."

"Teshimine?" Ginji whispered, opening his eyes.

He was hanging against a wall in a large room, strapped by wrists, neck, waist, and ankles. Strangely, the air was free of the usual ambient prickle of electricity that he could always sense. It was as if he was in some sort of null zone, outside reality. The room itself was wide and empty, ceiling rising high above, traceries of something incomprehensible marked across the floor.

Ban wasn't there. Where was he?

Teshimine was standing in front of him. Ginji tried to throw himself towards him, to hug his oldest friend out of sheer joy and happiness, but found that he couldn't get out of his restraints. "Teshimine!" he shouted. "You're safe!"

Teshimine returned Ginji's gaze for a moment, then his eyes fell. "I am. I'm so sorry."

Ginji shook his head. "Don't be sorry that you're safe!" Though -- he was having problems remembering exactly what had happened before this whole being tied to the wall thing. There had been the bit with him seeing Teshimine all tied up and going to rescue him, and then the bit with an explosion of light.

It had been Masaki's trick with the light. It had been Masaki who'd done this to him. And -- "Where is Ban?" he asked, keeping himself calm, very calm, because this wasn't a moment for Raitei, and Teshimine wasn't a person who deserved Raitei. Teshimine was his friend.

"He's being kept for the ceremony," Teshimine said sadly. "Like you, Ginji."

"What ceremony?" A glint of metal caught his eye, and he turned his head to look. There were twisting wires all around his restraints and surrounding the section of wall where he was confined. With a flash of insight, he realised that it had to be something to do with the null zone effect. "Why us?"

"Because that was how Babylon City planned it." Teshimine wandered a couple of steps to the left, then back again. "Brains Trust has been working on this since before you were -- well, born, Ginji. You are one of the last game pieces on the board. And Midou -- he found his own way into it, and now there's no way out."

"Why did Masaki do this to us?" Ginji demanded, rage rising again before he could throttle it down. "He was always one of us!"

"Maybe," Teshimine agreed. "But he was always the leader of Brains Trust too."

* * *

"Wake up."

Hevn's fluid tones drifted across Kazuki's consciousness like the trail of a comet. Ah, he reflected sleepily, all was now well. She must have come to her senses and without a doubt she would soon be getting him down from whatever was suspending his arms above his head and locking his ankles down near the floor and she would also rescue Juubei, whose heavy breathing he could hear from across the room, and even though the woman could on occasion be extremely annoying, being brainwashed into turning temporarily on your teammates was not necessarily the world's worst crime, indeed, it could be overlooked quite easily, and she would surely reduce her commission the next time she found them a job in compensation . . .

A line of fire painted itself across his cheek. He hissed as his eyes flew open.

Dungeon cell. Chains. Juubei also in chains. Hevn in front of him with riding crop.

"You know," he said, a little slowly at first because his cheek stung, "you don't have to go on with this. Your friends are still here for you, Hevn --"

He fell silent as she put the riding crop under his chin and raised it.

"And what would you say if I told you I wasn't being controlled?" she inquired sweetly. There was a smell of blood and alcohol and gunpowder drifting from her, caught in the folds of her skirt, the waves of her hair. "What if I told you that all along I'd been working for the other side?"

There was an intake of breath from where Juubei hung in his own set of chains.

Kazuki calculated, strung webs of facts in his mind, spun them together till they came to a conclusion. "I would be impressed," he finally said. "That would be an extremely long and careful piece of work."

Hevn stroked the crop down his throat, then removed it, pacing round behind him, her heels clicking on the floor. Tap, swish, tap, swish, in slow deliberate steps. "You're quite right. It was a long piece of work. _Years_ outside here. Building up a reputation. Making contacts. We needed an agent on the outside, of course . . ."

It was too easy an opening. "We?" he asked, and tried to keep his tone gentle, inquiring.

The crop cut across his back. He felt the thin silk of his clothing tear. "Babylon City," Hevn said, her words half drowned by Juubei's cry of fury.

It was a tiny wound, compared to many that he had known in battle. He ignored it.

"But it paid off. We found our straying Raitei and our wandering Voodoo Child." She laughed. "Life would have been so much simpler for the two of you if Raitei had stayed here all the time, you know. Or if you'd never come back once you left."

"Release him," Juubei growled.

"Or?" Hevn turned -- Kazuki could hear the sounds of her movement, even if he couldn't see her -- towards Juubei. "What are you going to do, samurai boy? You -- I swear you've been almost as much of a hindrance as this one has. The only useful thing you've ever done has been to drag him out of that Orpheus haze of his. And as for that --" She turned again, and lashed Kazuki across the back. Once. Twice. A third time.

Kazuki had to admit that she'd clearly had practice at it. He caught his breath. "You blame me for that?"

Hevn stalked round to face him again. "Because of _that_ , I nearly got killed. Lucifer's damn scheming -- oh, it brought in plenty of information for Brains Trust, I'm not arguing with that, but then I had to go along as a sacrificial goat with you lot! Meddle with it all when I'm not even the one supposed to do the fighting! Go through that ridiculous training! And then have you turn on me and nearly kill me! I could have _died_!"

"Should I apologise for not killing you?" Kazuki asked.

The crop cut across his face, then across his chest.

"It was all a trick?" Juubei asked, a deep note of fury beneath his voice. "All your work with us? The assignments? Everything?"

Hevn took a deep breath, steadying herself. "Oh, the jobs were real enough. I needed to have your trust, and the best way to do that was to be a professional. But because of all of this, because you wouldn't sit there and wait to die on schedule, I've had to live with Midou's mauling, the Voodoo Brat's insolence, Ginji's emotional neediness, and not to mention you -- yes, the pair of you, you of the High Family and Noble Birth and Great Destiny -- looking down on me all this time, and almost killing me . . ."

She turned the riding crop between her fingers, looking at it, then dropped it. "Pointless. I couldn't hit you hard enough to hurt you the way that I want to, satisfying as it was to try. So I'm going to tell you this. Your Raitei is going to be the tool he was always born to be. Nothing more. Your world is going to end. You are going to be sacrifices. That's where it finishes. We brought the Black Thread users here to distract you. They failed. That doesn't bother me. I just want you to know that _you_ have failed too. Game Over."

"Hevn!" Kazuki shouted after her, but she slammed the door behind her, and he heard the key turn in the lock.

* * *

Teshimine tucked his hands into his pockets. "Masaki raised me," he said flatly, "as I raised you. Does that mean anything to you?"

Ginji tried to square relative ages. "He's not that much older than you! Or than me!"

"He is, actually." Teshimine sighed. "All of them are. They just didn't show it. Gen -- yes, he was one of them, but he walked out and they let him go -- Gen was the only one who aged naturally, and even then I'm not sure. But Masaki," there was a softness in his voice as he spoke the name, "looks younger than he should be, and the Specialist looks younger still. Have you seen her?"

"I don't know," Ginji said. "Who is she?"

"She looks like a little girl, blonde, with a doll --" Teshimine cut off as he saw Ginji nodding. "Yes. That's her. She's not as devoted to this project as Masaki is, or at least, not for the same reasons. She's, well, cold. She just wants to know. I think she'd rip the cover off the universe if she could."

"What does Masaki want?" Ginji asked urgently.

"He wants to call down power. It's -- well, it's sort of mystical. You're the power source that'll let him do it. Don't worry," Teshimine said hastily. "It won't kill you. I'd never have agreed to it if it had meant it'd kill you. Ginji, you know me. I didn't _want_ this to happen." There was genuine pain in his voice. "I helped where I could. I took a message from Gen to Paul. I couldn't do more than that."

Ginji shook his head. This nonsense about calling down power could wait. "Where's _Ban_?" he demanded. "What have you done with him?"

Teshimine bit his lip. "I have to do what Masaki wants. He's the one who understands about all this. He raised me, Ginji, do you understand that? He's always been there for me. I can't disobey him now."

"Where's Ban?" Ginji reached for Raitei, for the bloom of power, but there was nothing there to root him in the lightning. There was rage but no thunder, fury but no storm. "Where is he?" he demanded, and heard his own voice crack with fear.

"I'm so sorry," Teshimine said, and walked away, steps hurrying and guilty.

* * *

They eventually came to a room of glass tubes surrounded by computers. Miroku Natsuhiko had shifted his grip to Himiko's shoulder. More than once she had considered releasing Puppet Scent and testing what Kagami had said, but their route had taken them through wide corridors with good ventilation, and she wouldn't have been able to raise enough of it fast enough. But there was a clock ticking away in the back of her head, and it said, _time is running out, time is running out._

"Is this supposed to mean something to me?" she asked rudely, hoping to provoke Kagami into a reaction or a mistake.

It didn't work. He turned to smile at her again, smooth as a mirror. "These are your parents, Voodoo Child. Your cradle. Your birth."

She looked at the tubes again, and this time they made sense, they fitted the familiar patterns of science fiction and futuristic nightmares. She'd always tried to put thoughts of her parents as far away as possible, so that they would not trouble her, and she had repeated to herself each night that Yamato was the only parent she needed, the only parent she would ever need, but this . . . "No," she whispered, and heard her voice echo against the glass.

"All of us." Kagami drifted forward to lay a cold hand against her cheek. "Do you think you are the only child of Babylon City? All of us. Teshimine, Hevn, myself, your brother, Raitei, you . . . We are the chosen children, Lady Poison. Except they chose you and your brother for something else."

Anger flared in her beyond what she could have expected. So quick, so hot, so painful. "And what do you know of my brother?" she demanded.

Kagami turned her to stare at her own reflection in the nearest glass tube. "They wanted to call down powers, Voodoo Child, but they needed flesh to house them. Your brother and yourself were made for that. You were to be flesh puppets. That's why you were made -- resilient. But your brother was a fool." His face twisted into a sneer. "You and he, the only two survivors of the program, and he took you and _ran_."

"But something found him anyhow," Himiko said, staring into her own dark eyes as if her reflection could answer her. _Big brother. You tried to save me. You always tried to save me._ "Was that you too?"

Kagami laughed as if she was flirting with him, the malice falling away to leave him all bland smiles again. "Oh, that was a miscalculation, I hear. When Raitei began coming into his full power, he started the program early, and something came through. A good thing that you weren't taken too."

"Ah." It was astonishing how calm she could be, as calm as the fury of the Red Death moments, as calm as an avalanche in the second of its fall. "Ban saved me twice, then, didn't he? By taking Raitei away from you?"

"There isn't a third time," Kagami whispered. "We have him now. And Raitei. All of you."

Himiko flicked her eyes to look at him, and saw a dozen reflections, all grinning. But only one of them was touching her. "Did you really hate my brother that much?" she asked idly, and tasted the beginnings of Puppet Scent in her lungs, sweated it out of her pores silently. "What was he to you?"

"He was a fool," Kagami spat, moved to reaction.

The air burned. She choked, bent over, was held upright only by Miroku Natsuhiko's grasp. He caught her by both shoulders, swung her into his arms as she struggled to breathe.

"Ah. How sweet. You had to fight." Kagami patted her cheek again as she focused on the movement of air in and out, as she tried to concentrate on his face through hallucinatory glimpses of darkness. "Don't worry, Voodoo Child. It won't matter soon. When they come through, _you_ won't be there any more. Ever again."


	14. Chapter Fourteen

When the door opened again, Ginji looked across to see who was coming in, hoping it might be Teshimine. He had wrenched at the bonds that held him in place, tried to call on his birthright of power, but nothing worked. It was a kind of deafness and blindness, like being under anaesthetic and touching the numbed spot on his own skin; there should have been the sensation of lightning, and there was nothing. Nothing.

A procession came through the door, led by a child. With a shock he recognised her as the little blonde girl that he'd met once before, in the Venus de Milo affair. She wasn't carrying a doll this time, but moved with a preternatural calmness that somehow made her unnatural and eerie. She was a little blonde ghost from some Victorian horror story, Alice in Wonderland after the Apocalypse.

There was a drum beating in the background, throbbing in time with his pulse. Someone was chanting in a language he didn't recognise. He thought it might have been French.

Behind her followed Masaki. He looked just as Ginji remembered him. It hurt physically to see him here, like this, and to know what he had done. Ginji called out to him, but he made no answer.

Teshimine was there, as well, and Kagami, and the oldest Miroku, and Hevn with them -- Hevn? -- and other people, oddly blank and faceless, carrying Himiko and Ren. Ren was unconscious. Himiko was conscious and struggling, he could see that much, but there was some sort of gag and helmet strapped over her head, presumably to stop her using her Scents, and . . .

. . . and there was Ban, chained and gagged, ferocious, conscious, and the sheer joy of knowing he was there made Ginji relax. If Ban-chan was there, then everything was going to be all right. The GetBackers were together.

"Arrange them," Masaki said, not looking at Ginji.

The blank-faced carriers chained Ren to the wall first, opposite Ginji. She hung there limply, head bowed. They placed Himiko on the ground midway between the two, at the foot of an altar -- but there hadn't been an altar there a moment ago, this must be Babylon City virtuality, and Ginji would not think about who the altar was for, he would not -- and tied her there, and then they brought Ban over to the altar, and he was fighting for every step of the way, throwing himself backwards and forwards, trying to break free. The room was silent except for the hissing of breathing and the distant throb of the drum.

In the end the blank-faced men forced him down onto the altar, and chained him at the feet and wrists. They stepped back then and walked away, as though completely unconcerned by the matter.

Ginji had decided that random shouting and kicking wasn't going to get him anywhere. He cleared his throat.

Masaki looked across at him. "Yes, Ginji?" he said, and his voice was just as it had always been in the old days, when he had been one of the Four Kings and the Volts had been the Volts and nobody had ever thought about the future.

"What's going on?" Ginji asked. "What are you doing?"

"Ah." Masaki folded his arms. "How much do you know about voodoo, Ginji-kun?"

Ginji bristled. "Nothing. Ban-chan is the one who knows about that sort of thing. What does it have to do with all this?"

Masaki swept his arm out in a gesture. The rest of the room was silent, poised and still like a staged tableau. "Imagine that there are powers outside normal perception, Ginji. Forces. Entities. Mugenjou was built as a lightning rod to call them down. Brains Trust was an organisation dedicated to capturing and controlling them. The trappings of voodoo are merely detritus, built up through superstition and history. But the actual powers behind it are real. We tried to call them once before through the traditional methods, but that didn't work. The entity who was summoned chose to leave us in peace, with an understanding that we would not try to interfere with him." He tilted his head. "You met him, Ginji-kun. He called himself Akabane Kuroudo, but that was only the body's name. The spirit was Carrefour, the Guardian of the Crossroads, the traveller by night, and Carrefour is no man's friend."

"What happened to him?" Ginji asked.

Masaki shrugged. "The _loa_ is banished. The body is dead."

"Akabane's dead?"

"Weren't you listening? There was no Akabane. It was a game for him. He's gone. It's over." Masaki took a quick step, his first sign of nervousness. "We started again. We decided that we needed an entity that we could shape; raw power that we could give form to. We cloned bodies to hold it, the Voodoo Children. We created the Marassa to be our agents." He nodded towards Hevn and Kagami, who had moved to step together and embrace.

Ginji could only think, _Oh, Hevn_ , and then, _I thought you were our friend._

Her eyes glittered as she looked at him, avid and hungry.

"We experimented with other methods. We funded Lucifer's work. He failed, but the data was useful. We bred for a child who could draw enough raw power to open the gateways without the need for worshippers and ceremony." Masaki pointed a hand at Ginji. "You were entering into that power when Midou Ban stole you. He put off your destiny by a few years. It all comes paid now."

"Who _are_ you?" Ginji asked. "I thought I knew you, Masaki."

Masaki raised his fingers to touch his face. "The flesh is renewed. We developed ways of cloning new bodies, of rejuvenating ourselves, long ago . . ." He nodded towards the little girl with the doll. "You should ask her, Ginji-kun. She knows far more about it than I do. But for what it's worth, I am much older than you think I am, and I have been planning this for a long time. We shall call down power. We shall filter it through a constructed mind and then install it in a constructed body, and it shall be our servant. And what we have done once, we shall do again."

"You can't just do that!" Ginji pleaded. He would have said more, he would have _done_ more, but the lightning of his power was untouchable.

"No. We can't _just_ do that. Some components are necessary, even for what we have devised, and one of them is the blood of a sacrifice." He glanced at the writhing Ban. "And the person who has caused us so much trouble will be an admirable _cabrit sans cornes_ , a hornless goat to die on the altar."

"No," Ginji whispered, and thunder sounded somewhere overhead.

Masaki drew a wide-bladed machete from the depths of his coat. "One for power," he said, pointing the blade at Ginji. "One for a mind." He pointed it at Ren. "One for the body." The blade moved to point at Himiko, who was struggling with her gag, eyes wide with a furious knowledge that scared Ginji even more. "And one for a sacrifice." He pointed the blade at Ban, then reversed it across his forearm and offered the hilt to Hevn.

She took the blade and stepped forward, and began to speak.

* * *

Kazuki surveyed their advantages. Being thoroughly restrained was certainly not an advantage. Their current physical state was adequate; Hevn simply didn't have the physical strength or training to have done him any serious damage, and whatever gas had been used to subdue them had passed now, leaving the two of them awake and suffering from headaches.

Knowing what might be going on elsewhere would only have been an advantage if they could have done something about it.

"Juubei?" he called softly. "How are you feeling?"

Juubei raised his head. "I . . . cannot break free," he reluctantly admitted. Blood streaked his forearms from where the cuffs had cut into his wrists. "I am sorry, Kazuki-sama."

Kazuki shook his head. "Not your fault. They knew what to expect from us. Hevn could have told them." The words were bitter. He still had difficulty believing that the woman whom he had known, whom he had even vaguely liked, should have been nothing but a pretty mask. It would have been pleasant to believe that she was somehow controlled or used, but there had been the ring of truth in her voice when she had spoken to them, the note of genuine hatred.

He wondered what Makubex would do, if he could do anything at all. They already knew that Babylon City could hack Makubex's computers and files; any autonomy that Makubex had possessed had been illusory at best. Would Brains Trust just make their rule public? Or would they simply act as they wished and ignore Makubes as long as he didn't get in their way?

There had to be a way out of this. He would not submit. He would --

The doorknob clicked, once, and then there was a concussion that echoed through the cell as the lock was literally blown out of the door. It hit the wall on the other side of the cell, next to Juubei, and fell to the floor with a clank.

The door swung open, the new ragged hole in it still smoking, and Toshiki walked through, shaking his right hand as though it pained him. He was battered, bruised, and smeared with mud, but there was a fire burning in his eyes that Kazuki remembered from the old days.

_He's ready to dance. And so am I._

"I apologise for the delay, Kazuki-sama," Toshiki said quietly. A set of keys dangled in his right hand. He unlocked Kazuki's cuffs, then moved over to release Juubei as Kazuki rubbed his wrists.

"What happened?" Juubei asked, voice low.

Toshiki shook his head briefly. "Nothing significant. I was a prisoner. Ren released me. We were attacked by Masaki --"

Kazuki hissed in surprise, drawing a quick breath between his teeth. "Him too."

"Mm? Who else?" Toshiki queried.

"Hevn." Kazuki unwound the sash from his waist, Toshiki's sash that he had carried all this time. "She was never one of us. She only wanted our trust." He walked over to Toshiki. "And this is yours."

Toshiki's eyes softened, and he took the sash in both hands, running the silk between his fingers for a moment before binding it around his waist. "Thank you, Kazuki-sama." He hesitated, then continued. "Masaki left me for dead and took Ren with him. I regained consciousness about half an hour ago, and overhead a conversation between Kagami Kyouji and a man I did not recognise. They had Kudou Himiko with them, but she was unconscious. They said something about a ceremony that was about to happen, but also that you were prisoners here. I could not --" He broke off.

Kazuki laid a hand on Toshiki's shoulder. "We understand. Now, come. We have a ceremony to stop."

"Indeed," Juubei rumbled. "Time to speak now or forever hold our peace."

Both Toshiki and Kazuki stared at him. Kazuki eventually said, "Was that a _joke_?"

"Of course not, Kazuki-sama," Juubei said blandly.

Kazuki gestured for Toshiki to lead the way. They left the cell at a run.

* * *

"Cote solei' leve? Li leve dans l'est! Cotee solei' couche? Li couche lans Guinee! Grands, ouvri'chemin pour moins . . ."

Himiko knew the words that Hevn was speaking, recognised them from her own studies. _Where does the sun rise? It rises in the east! Where does the sun set? It sets towards Guinea! Great ones, open the way for us . . ._ She was not stupid. When people had called her Voodoo Child, she had tried to find out what the words might mean.

And now here she was, helpless, mute, and about to lose her soul.

There had to be a way out of this. She clung to the thought like a talisman. There had to be something she could do. She might hate Ban, but he never gave in. She might frequently be furious with Ginji, but he would not admit defeat. She could do no less.

Doctor Jackal's blood was still on her skin. He had not been a friend or a lover; he had been something different, and yet that had still been something important, and his blood wanted vengeance.

She was a witch, wasn't she? _Witch of Poisons._ That was what Lucifer had named her, and he'd been just another puppet on these people's strings. Witches knew all about vengeance. She'd spent three years hunting for Ban for vengeance for her brother. Now she knew who had really been behind it all, and she would have blood for it.

There had to be a way.

Hevn was working through the ceremony in the standard pattern, invoking the _loas_ in a general way, killing a couple of hens -- she could see Ginji wincing from here, how like the idiot to be concerned over two chickens -- and the gunpowder and the chalk and the rum, all of the usual stuff. Then she turned to Masaki, and Masaki stepped to the wall beside Ginji and threw a switch.

Lightning streamed upwards around Ginji's body, tugging his hair upright, casting the spectre of furious Raitei across his face, and slammed down all around the walls of the great room, its brilliance turning the blood on the floor plain black. Ginji was screaming, but it was lost in the rush of electricity, and Hevn tossed her head back in the same moment, caught in a brief ecstacy of power.

The thought came to Himiko like a gift, sudden and complete. _I cannot break free myself, but perhaps someone else could, and they are currently swinging the door wide open._

She began to half-whisper, half sing, knowing that her voice would be blocked to other ears by the mask that covered her face and checked the use of her poisons. "Mait' Carrefour -- ouvrir barriere pour moins! Papa Legba -- cote p'tits ou?" _Master Carrefour -- open the barrier for us! Father Legba -- where are you?_ "Mait' Carrefour -- ou ouvre yo! Papa Legba -- ouvri barriere pour li passer! Ouvri! Ouvri! Carrefour!"

The words settled into her bloodstream as she repeated them, and rang in her ears, louder than Hevn's words, and behind her she could feel that shadow which she had grown used to for three years now, that smiler with the knife, and a familiar voice whispered, "I am coming, Lady Poison."

 _Hurry,_ she would have asked, but the pulse was shaking her, and there was thunder at the door.

* * *

Toshiki ran in front of Kazuki and Juubei, leading the way. He should have been preparing himself for battle, but a memory would not leave him. It teased at him until he acknowledged it.

He had been thrown down by Masaki's blow, left to lie in the mud, and he had been on the point of death. He had felt it in his body, tasted his last breath in his mouth, and then --

 _\-- "Hell Knight," Lucifer's voice had said, and he had felt a firm hand grasp his shoulder and drag him up, force him to his knees,_ make _him breathe, and he had looked up to see a remembered face and burning eyes for a moment. "We are not yet done," --_

\-- and he had woken, coughing up mud and water, pulling himself back into movement and action.

And was it so strange that Lucifer might have remembered him, or he remembered Lucifer, here where they seemed to be on the borders of reality? Lucifer had always been a man who paid his debts.

The wide doors of the room where he had heard the ceremony was to take place stood before them. He nodded to Kazuki, and tilted his head, in a _shall I?_

Kazuki nodded in response.

Toshiki slammed the doors open with a single blow, and they stared into the lightning-lit room beyond.

* * *

The sound of the doors crashing open broke through Himiko's half-trance, and she tilted her head to see Kazuki and Toshiki and Juubei come through at a run.

"Defend the centre!" Masaki called, and stepped between them and Hevn, who continued her chanting without a pause.

Amid the crackle of the lightning, Himiko saw Kagami and Miroku Natsuhiko move to intercept the three men, Kagami swinging round in a drift of sparkles and leaving the air dancing in his wake as he smoothly glided towards Toshiki, Miroku Natsuhiko drawing his sword and shattering a spray of Juubei's needles out of the air into shards at his feet, and then side-stepping a web of Kazuki's threads.

For a moment, she struggled on the edge of the precipice, feeling the darkness overshadowing her. _They'll be enough. I won't have to do this._

_And what if you guess wrong?_

_I don't want to do this, what if he won't give me my body back, what if --_

And with the eyes of a trained fighter, of a _professional_ , she saw that Toshiki was moving a fraction too slowly, already marked by earlier injuries, and that Kazuki and Juubei were not expecting the Miroku's transformations, and that the sad-eyed Teshimine and Masaki were already moving to step in and help.

"Carrefour," she whispered, and shut her eyes, and felt her body wrench so hard that her back came up from the floor as she twisted in pain, and exploded into darkness.

* * *

Toshiki spat out blood, and fell back two paces towards Kazuki and Juubei. This wasn't going well. The man in the white coat with the sword was very good at what he did. Kazuki needed time and space to maneuver, and they didn't have enough for either. And as for Kagami Kyouji, well -- he was as fast as he'd been earlier that day, and Toshiki wasn't.

Hevn's chanting was getting faster. She was building to a climax of some sort.

Toshiki considered last-ditch options. Kagami wouldn't be expecting him to do something stupid. If he dodged past him and got Midou Ban or Ginji free, Kagami would take him down and he'd be out of the fight, but perhaps one of the GetBackers would be able to do what he couldn't.

Hevn lifted the machete she was holding.

Shadows rushed over Himiko's body like water, and she came up from her bonds in a spray of silver metal, blades glistening around her hands. She laid one palm across the other, and drew out a long, bloody sword.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

All the serpents in the world could do nothing without leverage. They'd known what they were doing when they chained Ban's arms together, strapping one to the other so that he could call Asclepius as much as he liked, but he wouldn't do anything except rip his wrists to pieces against each other.

He probably had Hevn to thank for that. He'd have blamed her for it, even hated her, but she was so far from the person that he'd thought she was that he didn't even know her enough to hate her. All those years, all those smiles . . . he had to hand it to her, she was an even better liar than he'd thought.

Ban squirmed around on the altar enough to be able to see the ex-Volts fighting their way in. His innate skills and impressive experience in battle enabled him to assess the situation in a fraction of a second.

_Fuck. We're doomed._

Not that he was the sort to underrate other people, and he was prepared to admit that under the right conditions those three could be moderately impressive, and they were good at working together, but against the current weight of opposition? Not a chance.

The glint of metal caught at the edge of his vision. He rolled back to see Hevn raising her machete above him.

So this was where it all paid out and where accounts came due. There was nothing in her eyes that he could appeal to. She looked down at him as if he was nothing more than one of the chickens she'd killed earlier, hair blowing back from her face in the winds of the battle, and her lips formed words that he couldn't hear but that made the stone beneath him shake.

_Grandmother, is this what you saw --_

Her blade came down.

Shadows rose on the other side of him like a crack opening on deepest night, and a flash of red as dark as heart's blood swung round to meet the machete just above his neck. Metal sang against metal in a shriek that cut through the wind and the fighting.

It was Akabane's sword, but Himiko was holding it, a Himiko haloed in darkness and with shadows flowing behind her like a long cape, with scalpels swinging round her free hand like a bracelet, Himiko with death itself looking out of her eyes.

Hevn's hand trembled. "Voodoo Child . . ." her red lips shaped.

Himiko shook her head, once, in a gesture of flat denial, and she twisted her wrist, slapping Hevn's blade away. She swept over the altar in a smooth jump, and her sword came across and down in a single smooth motion, and she ran Hevn through.

Hevn screamed. There was another scream at the same moment from across the room, and Ban couldn't see who it was, but it echoed Hevn's cry an octave deeper, and it had the same note of utter fury and despair.

Himiko (but it wasn't Himiko any more, it was someone else, Ban could see it, smell it in her like drying blood) stepped closer to the taller woman, driving the blade through her till it stood two handspans out behind her. "I warned you, Madam Negotiator," she said, and Ban could hear Akabane's tones in Himiko's voice, the familiar stresses and choice of words shaping the familiar voice into something different and lethal.

 _Did you know if you gave yourself to him that he'd use you to kill?_ he wondered. _Did you care?_

Himiko turned, dragging her blade free of Hevn, and sliced it once along Ban's body, cutting through chains and bindings in a single smooth motion. Behind her, Hevn collapsed to the ground, still graceful even now; her hands fluttered briefly as she fell, grasping at the air before tumbling open and still.

Ban sat up, shaking ropes and chains away gratefully, and surveyed the room. Kagami Kyouji was coming in fast, in a dazzle of dust and mirrors, but the bar host seemed more interested in Himiko, so he'd let the brat take care of him. He was quite sure that she could.

The air hummed with wind and thunder.

* * *

Kazuki and Juubei paused for a moment, back to back, as Kagami Kyouji abandoned Toshiki to tear across the floor towards the altar. The air was full of movement and wind, and Kazuki couldn't see clearly what was going on over there without taking his attention away from Miroku Natsuhiko.

And at the moment, that would be fatal.

Light flashed behind him, brilliant and glaring, and threw his shadow on the floor hard and black in front of him. He felt Juubei stagger back against him from the force of an impact, heard his friend groan.

He would have to trust Juubei to be able to hold for a moment longer, trust Toshiki to be able to help, trust both of them to watch his back while he took a chance. He couldn't reach Midou Ban or Kudou Himiko from here, but they seemed to be managing something for themselves, if that was what was distracting Kagami -- but that wasn't the point. The point was that perhaps, just perhaps, he could reach Ginji.

Pivoting in a whirl of strings, he spun round and exchanged places with Juubei in a pattern that they had practiced thousands of times before, and faced Masaki.

_Did I ever know you, any more than I knew Hevn?_

Masaki had seen him fight a dozen times before. He'd know what to expect. And so Kazuki gave him what he would not expect, a deliberate beginner's move of stepping forward in a straight cross of threads that only a fool would have tried against a frontal assault. A novice could have caught it and used the opportunity against him. But Masaki, so used to his tactics, was taken by surprise and knocked back a half-pace.

It was enough.

Kazuki dived past him in a fluid ripple of motion, somersaulting and sliding across the floor like a wave of the ocean

_\-- the wave about to break over Mount Fuji --_

and came to a pause in front of Ginji, trapped there in a thunderstorm of lightning that threw Raitei's mask across his face but that left him powerless.

_From Earth to Heaven --_

He spun out a web of threads, casting them from his hands like rain, feeling Masaki behind him like an eclipse, but not having the time to care for that, only hoping that he would have long enough for this.

_\-- from Heaven to Earth --_

The thin silk hissed as it touched the lambent electricity, scorching and burning, but it held for that moment of conduction, that split second of diversion. The power jumped to follow a different pattern, one that led it into Ginji, that gave him the power he needed.

_\-- falls the shadow._

The light behind him struck him down and he fell, but in that moment he heard the crash of thunder and saw Raitei step free of the wall, the mantle of his power crackling round him brighter than the sun.

* * *

Himiko was aware of moments, like bright bubbles in an ocean of darkness. She was the foam on the surface, but the presence that moved through her body was the dark currents beneath. She was there and not there, and she had known what would happen when she had let him possess her, she had heard the warning he gave Hevn earlier, she was aware of what would happen and she had not done a thing to stop it.

Would Ginji have tried to spare Hevn's life? Certainly. Would Ban? Possibly.

(Would Raitei? Raitei would have killed her without even giving the woman a second's thought after her death.)

Kagami's face -- she saw it in one of those moments of meaning and sanity -- was twisted in fury as he fought, and he trailed diamond dust like the curves of a whip, filling the air with it and lashing at her till her clothing hung in rags.

Himiko hung suspended in darkness, outside time, outside space.

There was a time when she has wanted to kill Ban because he had killed her brother. Was it the same thing now? Had she wanted Hevn dead, did she want Kagami dead, because they were implicit in her brother's death? Would she bring down the whole of Babylon City because of it?

And the answer was yes, yes on so many levels, because it had only ever been her and her big brother, and then her and her big brother and Ban, and she had nothing in her life except them, and now she _knew_ how huge that nothingness was, born from a glass womb, made to be an empty body, Voodoo Child, puppet, toy, _thing_. And it had been them all along; hardly Ban at all, only in the most petty sense, only in that he had been the body that struck the blow, but they had been the ones that made the blow necessary.

It would have been easy to let herself believe that Carrefour, or Akabane, or any name she chose to give him, rode her body and acted without her will. But that would have been a lie, and lying is death to true motion, a hindrance to true speed. The truth was that she was going to kill and keep killing until there was nothing left of them. Then she would stop.

Flash of light, flash of darkness, glass against steel, the wheel of the battle kept on turning, the fight went on.

She took full responsibility. She had done for years now. This was her choice.

* * *

Ginji had been screaming. The electricity had been running over him and round him and past him, a single hair's breadth away from him, too far to use, too close to endure, and through it he had been able to see the room and everything that was going on in it, and he had been able to do nothing, nothing at all.

Kazuki's threads fell through the lines of power as smoothly as rain, as slowly as a blessing. The lightning ran through them and into his veins, filling the gnawing hunger at his centre, and he stepped away from the wall in a shower of burning masonry, free at last.

Raitei flamed inside him, running mad and furious. Raitei was outraged. They had dared -- _dared_ \-- to do this. They would be struck down. The Thunder Emperor knew what to do, knew precisely what to do.

Ginji looked at Masaki's face, as calm and precise as ever, and put Raitei aside like a discarded mask. This wasn't Raitei's quarrel. This was his own. "Why?" he asked.

"Because," Masaki answered. Light curdled into a diamond between his hands and flared out in a laser, slicing through the air.

Ginji parried it with a lance of plasma (and it was strange how quickly it came to his hand, how fast and ready it was to his bidding, even though he was not Raitei, but perhaps there was too much pain even for Raitei to carry, and only Ginji himself could bear it in the end) and swept forward with the lightning carrying him.

Solid light danced around Masaki in a halo, flashing in quick blows that Ginji had to ward off before they could touch him. He could feel their pressure against his skin like blows from a rod of steel, could smell the hairs on the back of his arms burning from their heat. "It doesn't have to be this way," Masaki said, voice reasonable and confiding. He was once more the rock that Ginji had leaned on when they were both younger.

_But how young is he? How old are any of them?_

"Of course it doesn't," Ginji panted. "Stop it."

"No." Light flared again, hurling Ginji three steps back before he could catch his balance. "I have worked for this longer than you have been _alive_. I have planned this for longer than you can know. This does not stop. This will not be stopped." The air was too bright around him; it burned like a heat haze, like the sky in the desert.

"Are you my father?"

Masaki blinked. "What?"

"You created me," Ginji pointed out with unassailable logic. "If I was born for this, if you made me, then you are my father. And I will not let you hurt my friends!" Rage made the lightning halo him, made it dance and flicker and leap out to ground itself. "You do not own me --"

"Ah, but I do."

"You can't make me help you."

"But I can."

"You will not do this!"

"I can. And I will." Their forces wound together and wove a net of pure light and crackling plasma around them. "Ginji, why won't you help me? I thought you trusted me --"

"After all this?" Ginji shouted, gesturing at the chaos around them.

"Yes," Masaki said, and the light around him pulsed again. "Now and always, for that was how I made you."

* * *

Ban saw Miroku Natsuhiko at the same time as Miroku Natsuhiko saw him, and they were both moving towards each other at that instant, cutting across the floor of the huge room as though they were partners in a dance.

"Midou," the Miroku hissed. He brought his long blade down in a cut that Ban only just avoided; it left a deep gash in the tiled floor. "At _last_."

"Natsuhiko." Ban tried a Snake Bite on the other man's arm, but missed his grip; the other's body melted and reformed into Ukyo, the madly smiling tumbler with the wide curved blade, who took a few blindingly fast swipes at Ban before leaping back and returning to Natsuhiko's shape.

"I should hope you remember my name," Natsuhiko snarled. "It will be the last --"

"-- the last thing I hear, yes, yes, I know." Ban yawned elaborately as he ducked a set of swipes, then leaped over a nodachi blow as Natsuhiko was replaced by the stockier Tokisada. "Look, I've been avoiding you all this time --"

"We know."

For a moment the woman of the group was using her spear to try to pin Ban down; he moved in to hamper her at close range, and she shifted to Tsubaki, his teeth showing in a sneer, trying to rip out Ban's stomach with his daggers. Ban hastily backpedalled, circling to keep his distance.

Natsuhiko surfaced again. "We all want to kill you, Midou Ban. Even Yukihiko. However much he cares for your Amano Ginji. He too --"

"Shut the fuck up." Ban gestured rudely. "Listen here, Miroku Natsuhiko. I've let you be because I didn't want to hurt you. I know you've already been hurt enough. But --" He dodged Natsuhiko's blade, flipping backwards across the floor. "But if you force me too far, then I will not hold back."

"You'll kill me?" Natsuhiko's laugh changed as his body did, rising in tone to match Yukihiko's lighter body and smaller build. "Is that meant to scare me?"

"Fuck, no." There was lightning inside the room. Raitei must be loose. Ban was running out of time. "I'll do worse. Last warning, Miroku Seven. Withdraw or suffer the consequences."

Yukihiko frowned in concentration. Darkness began to orbit him in spinning circles, eating the light and heat from the air. "We have come too far to withdraw," he said calmly. "I regret what this will do to Ginji, but he will be better off without you. Once we are done with you, I will --"

Ban focused. The Jagan came to him in a eager swirl of power.

Yukihiko was gone, and Natsuhiko stood there instead. The spheres of darkness vanished; instead, Natsuhiko held a long katana between his hands, one that shone as if it had been forged from moonlight. "Did you think we didn't know you'd try that? There are seven of us and you can only do that three times. Go on. Try twice more. The rest of us will kill you."

"That's not it. I wanted you." Ban took a step forward. "And I knew you'd come up to protect Yukihiko. Any of you would. I'll say that much for you."

"So?" Natsuhiko readied the blade. It was sharp enough that the wind seemed to part around it and recoil in different directions.

"So you want to kill me, don't you?" Ban smirked, lowering his hands, feeling Asclepius around his right wrist as tight as a lover's grasp. "You want to feel my blood on that sword. Don't lie."

Natsuhiko didn't answer. He brought his sword around in a precise and absolute cut, a demonstration-perfect move that would slice a body like a bale of straw.

Ban caught it in his hand. Blood ran. Asclepius screamed.

"Look at me, Miroku Natsuhiko," Ban said, and called up the Jagan once more, meeting the raging Natsuhiko's eyes and knowing that Natsuhiko wouldn't break the gaze, not even to save himself, wouldn't let anyone else have Ban when he was his own to kill. _Why is it I get so many people -- never mind._ "It's you who needs to see this."

Natsuhiko stiffened as Ban's blood ran down the blade of his sword.

_Three children playing. They're all supposed to be geniuses of combat. They take stupid risks._

"Eris," Ban whispered.

_Three children playing and one child falls and there's blood on all three of them but only one of them is holding a sword._

Natsuhiko's lips moved. The howl of the wind and the crackle of the lightning stole his words.

_It is your fault, cries the boy holding the sword, your fault, your fault, your fault, and something in his eyes splinters as he screams._

Ban's hand tightened on the blade of Natsuhiko's sword. "It wasn't anyone's fault. Look, you want my blood, take it -- but stop this shit. You hear me, Natsuhiko? Look me in the eyes and kill me if you can."

_And the boy with the sword says that a monster killed his sister, and it was Midou Ban's fault --_

"It isn't that simple," Natsuhiko whispered.

_\-- the monster's fault --_

"It is." Ban's blood had reached the hilt of the sword. "It was an accident and it was my fault and your fault and her damn fault too. And everyone's got the right to go to hell in their own way, but not to take anyone else with them. So tell me, Natsuhiko --"

_\-- not his fault --_

"-- all those people in there, if they can see this, hear this -- they gonna let everyone else die because of you?"

_\-- and the blood ran down his sword . . ._

Natsuhiko trembled as the blade fell from his hand. It dissolved into shards of light as it struck the floor, melting into nothingness. He looked away from Ban's face, his gaze falling to his bloodstained hand. "Liar," he said quietly, and it was not clear to whom he was speaking.

"Just one minute. Was it a nice dream?" Ban asked, with all the poison of his patron god behind his tongue, eating through his words like acid. "Did you see what you want to see?"

Natsuhiko screamed, pressing his bloody hands against his temples. His face rippled as though it were underwater, changing and reforming and unable to remain still, other features briefly appearing and dissolving again, hair morphing from dark to white and back to dark, the lines of his body shifting under his long white coat. His scream grew louder, strangely multitonal, several voices screaming at once through a single mouth, from a man's cry of agony to a woman's shriek of betrayal.

Ban just stood there. He could feel the sword's cut in his hand, but only as a line of warmth, not as the pain it would be later. For years he had run away from this, because it had been an accident and Natsuhiko hadn't deserved to suffer for it any more than he himself had --

_but we're all sinners, Midou Ban, you should know that_

\-- he'd tried, he honestly had tried, but Natsuhiko had forced the situation and left him no choice.

As the scream cut off and Natsuhiko crumpled to the floor, now Yukihiko instead, tears streaking the youthful face, he wondered if it would have been kinder simply to finish the Miroku off and let them die believing they were innocent.

He turned away to gaze into the lightning.

* * *

Juubei and Toshiki stood back to back over Kazuki's body. He was still breathing. That had been the first thing Juubei had checked, the first thing that Toshiki had known from Juubei's stance.

Teshimine stood opposite them, but he didn't move to attack. Beside him was the little girl with blonde curls, a doll still cradled in her arms, age heavy in her eyes.

"Well?" Toshiki asked sharply. "Come at us, then, if you are coming --"

Teshimine cut the words off with a shake of his head. "No. Just . . . if we both stay out of it. Right?"

"Do you expect to win?" Juubei asked.

"Masaki can't lose," Teshimine said, and there was such a weight of pain and self-loathing and desperation in his voice that Toshiki felt a moment of sympathy for the other man, however much he had betrayed them, however much he had lied to them. "Masaki can't lose and Ginji can't win. I'll try and get you three out of here alive."

"Agreed," the little girl said, her inflections those of an adult. "Further deaths will serve no useful purpose."

"Perhaps you should have thought about that before you started this," Toshiki said. He had enough strength left to dispose of this pair.

Juubei held a hand up. "Wait, Uryuu. They are right about one thing. Ginji or Masaki, they will decide the battle."

Toshiki turned to flick a gaze across the room for a moment. Miroku was down. Kagami and Himiko were fighting and Kagami wasn't winning. "And what if Masaki wins, and then tells you to kill us?"

"I'll kill you," Teshimine said. There was no hesitation to it, no second thoughts. "You ought to understand that."

Toshiki nodded, once, and kept himself in position, waiting for the rolling light and thunder to resolve into a single figure.

* * *

Himiko ran with Kagami across the floor and halfway up the wall, moving with unaccustomed speed and lightness, as though the shadows around her buoyed her up and swept her onwards.

There would be a price to pay afterwards, she knew. It didn't matter.

Kagami's eyes were as pale and cold as shards of diamond. The playfulness was all stripped away, leaving nothing but hatred behind it.

_My brother, your sister -- where does it stop?_

A moment ago she'd wanted them all dead. Now -- now she wasn't sure what she did want, and she felt the presence inside her tremble at the thought, a flame shaken by the wind. It had been easy to fight Kagami, that time before in Mugenjou, when it had been a simple matter of him against her and Ban, and him trying to kill her because he'd been ordered to do so, and her striking back because of the lens and the bomb and everything else.

But now it was personal, and that made everything different.

They raced back across the floor, sweeping in a wide arc round the ball of light and fury where Ginji and Masaki faced each other, and his fragments of razor-edged glass rattled again her scalpels -- no, Akabane's scalpels -- like the drums that should be beating for her, for all of this, for the end of the Voodoo Child.

She knew that the loa riding her wanted to kill Kagami. Face him. Fight him. Kill him. For a moment it held back, letting her make her own choices.

 _It would be enough to stop him,_ she thought, and hated herself for ending it that easily.

But she could still smell Hevn's blood. And it didn't matter if the woman had been a traitor and never a friend, that everything she had ever said had been a lie, that those moments of amusement and even understanding when they had worked together had been nothing but deceit, it didn't matter, it was over now, and she could understand the anger and grief that made Kagami's face a mask. She could understand what it meant to lose someone you loved. She could understand wanting to kill for it.

And Kagami threw himself at her in a blatantly suicidal attack, unexpected and impossible to survive, which no sane fighter would have expected. She reacted automatically -- step, balance, lunge -- and as the sword punched through his chest, he pulled himself towards her on it and slashed downwards, the edged sparkle in his hand slicing through clothes and flesh. He cut across her body, a fraction of a centimetre below the big vein in the side of her neck, and down in a slow movement that pulled blood behind it, that would have killed her if she had been a moment too slow to sway backwards, an instant too late to strike him down.

Blood trickled from the wound across her torso, a line from neck to hip.

Kagami looked at her for a moment, his eyes meeting hers, as empty as dirty ice, and then he slumped forward. She could feel his heartbeat slow and die through the sword in her hand, feel his breathing stop; he was gone.

She tilted the blade to let him slide away. So what had he wanted, in the end? To kill her, or to join his sister?

 _You cannot save those who will not be saved, Lady Poison,_ a familiar voice whispered in her heart. _But I am glad that you have chosen to save yourself._

* * *

Ginji was conscious of the other fights coming to their respective ends, of the sound of screams and dripping blood, but it all came through the whirl of lightning and illumination as softly and gently as if he was underwater.

Masaki's hands closed on his shoulders. The other man was taller than he was. He shook Ginji as if he were a disobedient child. "You idiot! Don't you realise what you're doing?"

Ginji braced himself. "You don't -- see that anything is wrong -- do you?"

The light hammered down on him, suffocating him under its weight and pressure. "My will is what is right," Masaki said, the words intimate and distinct. "You are all toys. I created you. I can destroy you and make you again. This time I will make it right."

"Make us, make the world, make it right -- we're not puppets!" Ginji grabbed Masaki's shirt, knotting his hands in it, and for a moment he was a child again, demanding to know why the adult didn't _understand_. "We're not just --"

"Just what?" Masaki asked. "Illusions? Constructs? Virtual like Ren? How do you know this hasn't all been virtual? I can flip a switch and you'll go out -- like that!"

Ginji frowned, working that through in his mind. "That's still murder," he said stubbornly. "If we believe we're alive --"

"But you're not." Masaki smiled. "I am."

 _But if we believe we're alive, if we think we are, if we feel as if we are . . ._ The thoughts ran around in Ginji's head like shadows, impossible to fully formulate.

"None of you are real," Masaki said with calm certainty. "I can wipe you all away like dust."

The light intensified. It was hard to breathe. It was round him like a physical presence, pulsing like a heart, crushing him.

_. . . and if we're all illusions, even me, even Ban . . ._

"Out," Masaki said, "like a candle. Make a wish, and blow . . ."

_. . . but I believe that Ban exists, because we're the Getbackers, and there are two of us and that's why there's an S in Getbackers, and I believe in Ban, and Ban believes in me, so I exist too, and . . ._

". . . and you're gone."

The light hammered Ginji down to his knees and clogged his throat and bent him backwards until his spine ached.

_. . . and either none of it's real or all of it's real . . ._

He called the lightning and it came, wild and real and vital, fire which ran through his blood and let him raise himself from the ground, let him stand there facing Masaki, crowned with lightning and with plasma arcing around his hands. "Make me," he said.

Light broke against him in rolling wave after rolling wave, searing the floor away beneath his feet so that he stood on a small island, a pedestal surrounded by molten stone. Light blazed furious white, stark enough to burn his shadow into the walls. Light ripped and tore at him, deliberate malice and solipsism given form to destroy and break down and eradicate.

His lightning was alive. It existed. It held back the light and mocked it and outshone it.

Slowly the room paled into reality again, as the fires died away. Through the shadows and the smoke, Ginji looked down at the unmoving body at his feet.

It was strange how much older Masaki looked, now that the vitality had gone from his face and the light from behind his eyes.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

The air was still thick with the discharge of energies and the smell of blood. Himiko could feel the last traces of power as well, dissipating with the end of the ceremony. For the sacrifices were over and the dancing was finished, and the loa who rode her was folding his cloak of shadows and preparing to depart, his sword of blood vanishing from her hand and his blades fading into darkness.

Ban looked at her as though he was unsure of whom to address. "Are you still there?" he asked.

He was not polite. He never was.

"I am," she answered, "and -- he is, for a little while."

Ban nodded. "Come with me. You and me and Ginji, we need to end this."

She could feel the laughter at the back of her head, and it curved her lips in a smile as she walked gracefully after him, on this latest path that she found herself taking.

Ginji was already facing a gentle-eyed man whose face was streaked with tears. A little girl stood between them, blonde curls unruffled by the fighting, pretty frills unstained.

"Teshimine, I'm sorry," Ginji said. It clearly wasn't the first time. He didn't sound as if he ever expected to be forgiven.

Ban dropped a hand on Ginji's shoulder, squeezing it, and stepped forward to stand beside him. "This stops now," he said to the girl and the man. "I'm prepared to accept that you personally weren't behind this, but this stops now, do you hear me? Shut Brains Trust down. Break up Babylon City. Leave."

"We cannot do that," the girl said, her voice precise and formal.

"Why the hell not?"

"Babylon City is an integral part of Mugenjou. If we put an end to it, then Mugenjou will . . . no longer be what it was. It will be strictly physical. Nothing else will remain."

Himiko saw Ban and Ginji exchange glances, and she knew what they were thinking. Makubex. Ren. All the others, all the people who might have no idea that they were virtual -- for was unreal or real the right word for it, any more? Was everything strictly bounded by a physical body and flesh and bone? -- who could be blown out like candles.

"They won't do it again," Ginji said. "Let it go, Ban. It's finished. _They're_ finished."

"I don't trust them," Ban muttered.

"You should not," the little girl answered. "But nevertheless, you will. Our experiment was flawed. We were in error. I am the only one left now."

Something in Teshimine's face twisted. He turned away, arms folded round himself.

"It's finished," Himiko agreed. She drew the last few fragments of the loa's presence around her, letting it look out of her eyes. "We are done, and if you are wise, you will leave it that way."

The little girl bowed to Himiko -- or rather, Himiko noted wryly in the back of her mind, to what currently rode Himiko -- and nodded to Ban and Ginji, then turned away. She walked towards the wide doors, and thrust them open, a tiny figure as she stepped out of the huge room, into the darkness of the corridor and out of their sight.

"I'll just be a moment," Ginji said to Ban, and hurried over to Teshimine, throwing an arm over the older man's shoulders. Himiko couldn't hear his words, but she could hear his tone of voice, and it surprised her a little that he could sound so utterly angry and yet so very gentle.

"And you?" Ban glared at Himiko. "Are you going to be all right?"

She shrugged. _Blood on my hands._ "I'll do," she answered. "You were younger."

He threw back his head in scorn, or pain, and looked down at her. "That wasn't supposed to happen to _you_ , brat."

With a gesture as familiar as breathing, she punched him in the stomach and walked on by. "See to Ginji," she called over her shoulder.

* * *

Toshiki carried Ren across to set her beside Kazuki on the ground. "Can you do anything for her?" he asked Juubei.

Juubei checked her pulse points, his motions as clinical and careful as though he wasn't in pain himself, and shrugged. "She's unconscious; that's all. She should come round shortly."

"And Kazuki?" Toshiki asked, his voice softening. He knew that Kazuki wasn't in any serious danger, or Juubei wouldn't be this calm, but --

"Nothing too serious. He'll be awake soon."

Toshiki glanced across the room to where the Miroku man lay unconscious. "Should we do anything about him, do you think?"

There was a pause, then Juubei said neutrally, "Such as?"

"Check that he . . . won't be a trouble."

"I think Midou dealt with him."

"Good."

"Perhaps Makubex can do something with him."

Toshiki raised an eyebrow.

Juubei shrugged again. "He can stay in Mugenjou for the moment. We'll have him under watch that way."

* * *

Teshimine tried to shrug Ginji off, but Ginji had held on through worse. "Go away," he muttered.

"No," Ginji said. "Not this time."

Teshimine turned to look at him, and there was such pain and loss in his eyes that Ginji flinched for a moment. "You should have stayed gone," he said. "Then we could all still have been happy."

"You think it's that simple?" Ginji jerked at the other man's shoulder. He'd put on weight and muscle since the days of Volts, and even though Teshimine was still the larger of the two, he had to brace himself against Ginji's pull. "Just running away for the rest of my life? For Ban, and Himiko-chan, and --"

Teshimine cut him off with an angry gesture. "I would have done anything to save you from anyone except him."

"You expect me to forgive that?"

"No. I don't even expect you to understand that. And your Midou is never going to ask that of you." The fury went out of Teshimine's eyes, like a flame guttering and fading, leaving emptiness behind it like ashes after fire. "And you'll never know why it matters so much to be asked. And that's probably a good thing."

Ginji just stood there.

"Go away," Teshimine said wearily.

"No."

"You should do."

"Why?"

"I've betrayed you so many times already."

Ginji smiled. "It doesn't matter."

"You can't _say_ that," Teshimine began, but his voice already had that tone Ginji was familiar with from other conversations with previous enemies; disbelieving, confused, half amused, and already half accepting.

Ginji never had quite understood why people reacted that way once he explained that they were still friends, honestly, but he was more relieved than he could say to hear that tone in Teshimine's voice.

* * *

The last shadows drew themselves together in Himiko's mind, and as she felt them departing, she tried to frame a farewell.

 _Thank you for . . ._ For what? For being a professional? For killing people? For indulging in his own amusement? For lying to her for years? For taking her body and using it to slaughter?

Maybe she would know his presence again, but never the way that it had once been. She had passed her own crossroads and -- no, that wasn't true. Everything in life was crossroads. Everything was choice. The only way to be free of that was to give your will entirely to someone else, and that wasn't an option she was willing to entertain.

She was a professional. She chose her missions. She chose her life.

_Thank you for giving me choices. Thank you for guarding my back. Thank you for your presence and your absence, for your coming and your going, and for the time in the future when I will see you again at another crossroads._

Darkness washed around and through her in acknowledgement, and left her standing alone, a bloodied woman in rags in a large shadowed room; but standing on her own feet, upright, and owning her own soul.

* * *

Miroku Yukihiko opened his eyes, and he was alone, there was nobody else there around him. People moved and strangers took his pulse and looked into his eyes to check for concussion (words ran by like streams of water and were gone) but his brothers and sisters, his other selves, weren't there any longer. Natsuhiko. All of them. Gone.

He touched memories and turned them over like stones in a riverbed.

He remembered everything now. He would have got up to say to Midou Ban that it was all right, he was sorry, in this strangely clear state that cooled his thoughts and cleansed him, but he couldn't get his body to work.

The blind man was telling him to lie down, to try to rest.

Perhaps this time he could sleep without the dreams of blood gloving his hands, of the serpent that rose to look him in the eyes and say _do you remember?,_ all of it. Perhaps . . .

. . . no, he still couldn't tell Midou Ban that it was all right. He still couldn't forgive him. But perhaps he didn't need to kill him any more.

* * *

"I wish there were windows in here," Ginji said.

"I suppose, if it's virtual, then any windows would have to be virtual too." Ban gestured loosely at the high arched roof. "They could be looking out on anywhere."

"Onto the end of the world," Himiko remarked. She'd found a spare shirt somewhere, and had loosely knotted it across her chest to cover what Ban was tactfully not commenting on, mocking, or even sneering disdainfully at more than once every five minutes.

To be honest, he wasn't going to have the heart to make jokes about that for a while. Not with Hevn, and what had happened to her. It would have been nice to claim that he'd somehow known all along; that he'd merely been playing along with her, to fool her, that he'd never trusted her. But he had. He really had.

He could see the same note of pain in the others' eyes. Himiko, Ginji, Kazuki, Juubei, Toshiki -- all of them had been betrayed tonight. All of them had lost someone. Even if the person they'd cared for had never been real, the affection had been true. The apocalypse had come in the night and passed them by, but its wings had brushed them and left them stained with blood.

He still couldn't believe it was over. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it never truly would be.

"Cheer up," Himiko said, and punched him in the shoulder. "It can't be long now till dawn."

Ginji frowned at the ceiling. "Ban-chan, stand back a bit. You too, Himiko-chan. I've got an idea."

Ban lifted an eyebrow, but stepped away. Himiko did the same, moving with the slow precision of exhaustion.

Ginji raised one hand to point up at the juncture of ceiling and wall. Lightning jumped from his hand in splashing waves of plasma, and where it met the boundaries of the room, they did not burn; they simply melted away, driven out of existence by a more powerful force. The white-blue flames ripped a hole in the virtual reality, to show a pale sky beyond, looking out over Tokyo.

Ban stretched, and flung an arm over Ginji's shoulders, and tousled Himiko's hair with his spare hand. "Look," he said, as Ginji relaxed against him, as Himiko scowled, "the sun is rising."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe inspiration for this story to a variety of sources, including Michael Scott Rohan's _Chase The Morning_, the _Doom Patrol_ comic, Maya Deren, Alfred Metraux, Milo Rigaud - and of course, and always, the creators of _GetBackers_. Thanks to all of them, now and always.


End file.
